


A Late-inning Pressure Situation

by Quadrophenia



Category: Justified
Genre: Bi-sexual characters, M/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:09:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26684929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quadrophenia/pseuds/Quadrophenia
Summary: Tim gets a text message from an old friend just heading up Lexington way.Set four years after the end of the series.
Relationships: Raylan Givens/Tim Gutterson
Comments: 31
Kudos: 84





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Re-watching ‘Justified’ in lockdown. Decided to work through my anxiety by resolving the hidden Tim/Raylan love affair that is glaringly obvious throughout Season 6.
> 
> 1/6

Tim is into hour 10 of a stakeout, waiting for Dunlop to come relieve him, when he feels his phone vibrate once against the centre console.

He doesn’t reach for it right away because he’s pretty sure it’s Reagan, trying to reschedule the date he has backed out of — ostensibly because of this stakeout, but really because they ran out of things to talk about three dates ago and he just can’t stomach that sort of cheerful inanity after a full day sitting and watching. He’s just too keyed up.

So instead, he shakes out a few walnuts into the palm of his hand before popping them straight into his mouth and chasing them with a swig from his water bottle.

There is no movement at the house. There has been no movement at the house for two full days, but Tim has a gut feeling that it is coming, and if it doesn’t happen tonight, it increases the odds that something will happen tomorrow, compounding the day after that and the day after that...

...And so on.

At least it is quiet, and Tim has always been good with the quiet.

He’s been seeing Reagan at least twice a week for the last month and a half. She’s blonde and petite and what someone’s sweet, old maiden aunt — not Tim’s because Tim has no aunts, maiden or otherwise — would call ‘cute as a button’ or ‘pretty as a peach’. She’s a few years younger than him, in her early 30s, and pledged Alpha Delta Pi at USC and has three older brothers, one of whom is a Green Beret wouldn’t you know and has been in Lexington oh, a few years, but really wants to move to Louisville but she isn’t sure how she feels about a big city considering she’s always been a bit of a country girl what does he think about that?

She is exactly the sort of girl Tim’s Army buddies think he should be dating. 

In a moment of weakness two months ago, more than half-a-dozen bourbon shots in and unable to object, Tim had let Suds and Pinwheel set up an OK Cupid profile for him.

Reagan is the singular result of that OK Cupid profile. Tim has kept going with it because he didn’t feel like he had anything better to do, and he liked her eyes, unexpectedly dark for someone so blonde.

Tim has a thing for dark eyes and long lashes. 

They’ve slept together twice, and now Tim needs to find a way to back out gracefully before she accidentally stumbles into one of the places where he is not quite whole. 

It’s harder to hide that part of yourself from someone once they’ve seen you naked, eyes squeezed shut as you tip over the edge.

A mini van pulls up behind him and flashes its headlights once. Tim glances in the rearview mirror, recognising Dunlop’s silhouette by his ears and gives a small wave, feels for Dunlop, driving the mom-mobile again. Although Tim has been in that ride before and the driver’s seat has superior recline to Tim’s truck.

With a sigh, he puts the cap back on the water and reaches for his phone. He can’t break up with her over text message, that just doesn’t seem right when you’ve been inside a person.

But the text is not from Reagan. Tim squints, rearranges the letters on the notification and second guesses himself.

He blinks at his phone, looks up and out the windshield at nothing much in particular and looks back down again.

Yep. Still there.

He feels a tightening in his chest, a dull ache that has been dormant for four years — well, three and a bit, really — and his thumb hesitates over the screen before it seemingly develops a life of its own and taps the message open without Tim really meaning to.

_ Hey, coming through Lex. in a week. Business at the pen up that way. Was wondering if you wanted to grab a drink? _

Tim stares at the message and breathes slowly in and out through his nose, matching the length of the inhales to the length of the exhales until the ache in his chest recedes.

Raylan fucking Givens.

He tosses the phone back in the console, gives another wave to Dunlop who surely must be baffled by Tim’s hesitation to get the hell out of there, and starts the engine.

He needs a drink.

He wants to put the car into gear and peal out at full speed, but he forces himself to do it like a professional — _perhaps don’t draw unnecessary attention to yourself in an effort to obliterate your feelings in half a bottle of bourbon, Gutterson._

Twenty minutes later, he’s parked his ass on a bar stool at a hole-in-the-wall within stumbling distance of his apartment and is already two shots in, with a beer and a bourbon back in front of him.

His breathing is steady, his heart rate is back to normal and he can now look at his phone without his breath catching.

He hasn’t seen or heard from Raylan Givens since he sauntered out of the Eastern District of Kentucky Marshal’s office four years ago. The asshole didn’t even return his tote bag. Not that Tim really expected him or — let’s be real — intended him to.

They hadn’t talked about it ending, had just sort of mutually and silently let the cards fall that way. The book Raylan had tossed him had been his unspoken farewell, the bag Tim had so generously offered had been his own. A tangible cap on their romance? Affair? Sexual entanglement? Fuck buddy friendship?

Tim takes another sip of his beer, glances back at Raylan’s message. Thank Christ he has set his phone to read receipts off. Not that Raylan would probably notice either way.

His phone buzzes, and this time it is Reagan.

He opens it as it comes in, just to take Raylan’s name out of his field of vision.

_Hey u! Hope the stakeout isnt too boring. Just wanted u to know that I gotta go to Nashville next week for work so if you arent free this weekend we’ll have to wait a bit longer! Miss u xx._

He takes another sip of his beer and types out a quick reply before he can overthink it.

_ I don’t think I’m going to able to get away this weekend. Still no progress on the case. Also, an old friend I used to fuck is coming through town next week and I’m not sure I have enough anti-anxiety meds to handle the both of you — _

He deletes the last sentence and starts again.

_ I don’t think I am going to be able to get away this weekend. Still no progress on the case. Have a good time in Nashville and I will see u when u get back xx _

Tim has never added an xx to the end of a text message in his life, let alone when he doesn’t really mean it. Raylan Givens’ rather abrupt saunter back into his life — Raylan only saunters, can’t seem to stride like a normal goddamned person — has clearly fucked him up more than he’s willing to admit.

He deletes the xx and hits send. So, one problem dealt with. It’s not really fair of him to call Reagan a problem. She’s not clingy, she’s sweet, she started reading  Game of Thrones even before the series came out — he’s just not that into her. Does have lovely eyes, though.

Tim hasn’t told her about Raylan. They’ve gotten to the stage where they have alluded to the various exes that have made them the way they are, but have kept it vague. Tim also hasn’t told her about the whole bisexual thing. Not that he think she’d take it badly, he’s just not sure how he’s supposed to work it into conversation without artlessly blurting it out. That isn’t really his style, so he just hasn’t.

He takes a long pull of his beer and follows it with the full shot of bourbon. Signals the bartender for another. This one he will surely sip. He needs to slow the fuck down if he’s even going to be able to stumble back to his apartment, never mind it’s only six blocks away.

The bartender plops another shot down in front of him without comment and wanders back to the other end of the bar. The University of Kentucky students at that end are having A Very Serious Conversation about Brexit or some shit, and the whole thing makes Tim wonder if he got lost on his way here and somehow drove out of Kentucky. Which, honestly, sounds kinda nice.

He’d done a real good job of tamping it down, but Raylan shouldering his way back into his temporal lobe has meant that Tim is back to missing the bluegrass in his voice, the subtle taste of vanilla ice cream in his kiss, the firm muscle of his chest as he presses Tim back against the wall —

Tim shifts uncomfortably as he gets semi-hard at the thought. Takes another drink of beer and concentrates on his breathing.

———

Tim hadn’t been asleep when the pounding on his door began, but he jerked upright and snagged his weapon off of the bedside table all the same.

Every one of his senses was switched on, but his breathing was even.

He scanned the bedroom — empty — before padding silently into the living room. 

The banging started up again. ‘Gutterson. It’s me. Did you get my text message?’

Tim lowered the gun and thumbed the safety back on.

‘For fuck’s sake. Raylan?’

‘Yeah, would you mind letting me in? I think the old biddy in number 12 is starting to get ideas.’

‘Oh yeah, that’ll be Agnes, she can get a bit handsy,’ Tim glanced through the peephole. Yep, sure enough, there was Raylan Givens, hands on slim hips, leaning casually against the doorframe, hat pulled low across his face.

Tim undid the two deadbolts and two chains and opened the door.

‘It’s two in the morning,’ he said by way of a greeting.

Raylan looked up to meet his eyes, flicked his gaze back down to the gun in Tim’s hand, and back up again. ‘You sleeping?’ As if he didn’t already know the answer.

Tim decided not to dignify the question with the obvious and stepped aside so Raylan could come in.

‘Well, I had been in the middle of making my way through all seven of the Police Academy movies,’ Tim said drily, ‘but you are welcome to join me. I’m half way through number four.’

Raylan tripped past Tim and slumped all six feet of his lanky frame onto Tim’s sofa. Tim closed the door behind him and flipped the light switch. Christ, he looked like shit, and kinda drunk.

‘You look like shit,’ he said helpfully. ‘Take it things did not go well with Lindsey’s ex-husband?’

‘She cleaned me out, Tim,’ Raylan said, taking his hat off and tossing it on the coffee table. ‘Ransacked the place. Uninhabitable for the time being.’

Tim let out a sigh and put his gun down on the kitchen island. So much for going back to bed. He pulled two beers out of the refrigerator, twisted off the caps and walked back into the living room to hand one off to a morose Raylan, who took it with a grunt, presumably of thanks.

‘Well, I suppose the good news is that her husband didn’t kick the shit out of you before they lit out,’ Tim said amiably, as he dropped himself into the armchair beside the sofa. ‘How much?’

‘A goodly sum.’ Raylan took a pull from the bottle and grimaced as he looked down at the label. ‘Miller Lite, Tim? What the hell kind of hospitality is that?’

Tim just looked at him unblinkingly.

Raylan took another drink and sighed. ‘Rachel was with me when I saw the place.’ He ran his hand through his too-long hair. ‘I know she already thinks I’m a fool, but now she knows for sure I’m a fool.’

Tim took a sip of his own beer and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, spinning the bottle absently between his hands. ‘Raylan, I hate to break it to you, but we all know you’re a fool, particularly when there is a hot blonde in the picture. This don’t change nothin’. It’s just proof Ava and Winona weren’t anomalies.’

Raylan let off a huff of a laugh. ‘Can I stay on your couch tonight? Rachel said she’d offer, but she’s at her mother’s for the time being.’

Tim raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh, she told you about that?’

Raylan took another gulp of his beer. ‘Yeah, she told me about that. Shit, I’da hoped that one of us would demonstrate that you could maintain a stable domestic situation and still do this job.’

Tim took a sip of his own beer and leaned back again. ‘I dunno, there’s Nelson, he and his wife seem happy enough. And Art. And how do you know I don’t have a cute brunette hidden away in the bedroom I don’t want you to see?’

Raylan looked at him sideways. ‘Do you have a cute brunette hidden away in the bedroom you don’t want me to see?’

‘Even if I did, she wouldn’t be your type, not being a leggy blonde n’all.’

They sat in silence for a minute and sipped their beer.

‘I wouldn’t have opened the door if I’d had a cute brunette in there,’ Tim broke the silence with a candour that took him by surprise.‘Just left you to Agnes, who no doubt woulda taken pity on you if you’d tipped your hat the right way.’

Raylan smiled briefly, a small twitch of his lips in acknowledgment of the joke. But he still looked tired. ‘You don’t mind if I stay then?’

Tim sighed. ‘Nah, not a problem at all. You look like you need it. Just don’t shoot me if you wake up confused about where you are.’

The silence returned. It was comfortable, and Tim found himself warming to Raylan’s presence in his space. He and Raylan were friendly — even, Tim supposed, actual friends, ‘cause you could only have so many long drives through empty country on a poor diet, shooting the shit about every old thing before the line between colleague and friend started to blur. Also, for all of Raylan’s tendency to act like he was the central character in everyone’s narrative — not just his own — Tim found him to be remarkably relatable beyond just the shared trauma of childhood, the hillbilly upbringing, and the caustic wit acting as a defense mechanism for the aforementioned trauma and upbringing. At least if you ignored the hat.

But still, this was new. Tim didn’t really let people into his space much if he could help it. Hell, he was surprised Raylan even knew where his apartment was.

Raylan was the first one to break the silence this time. ‘Where has this reputation come from?’ He said it with a hint of good humour as he sipped his beer.

‘What, you being a pussy hound?’

Raylan snorted. ‘No, I assume I developed that reputation because I haven’t comported myself with a great deal of restraint since coming back to this god foresaken place.’ He stretched forward to put his now-empty bottle on the coffee table, and Tim watched as his jacket stretched over broad shoulders. ‘I meant, where did this reputation come from about blondes? I’ve always considered myself rather broad-minded.’

Tim felt himself grin and he waved a hand. ‘Oh, you know, Ava, Winona, Lindsey. Bit of a pattern jumps out at you if you stare at it long enough.’

‘Winona wasn’t blonde when we met, but I see your point.’ He crossed one leg over the other to pull off his boot. As it came free, Tim caught sight of a hole in Raylan’s striped sock, large enough that the middle toe stuck out. Tim found it weirdly charming — it marred Raylan’s cool-cowboy persona, making him somehow more accessible, more human.

More on Tim’s level.

He felt something stir inside of him — something he had only felt a handful of times since Afghanistan — and he became uncomfortably aware that he was sitting next to Raylan barefoot, in just his boxers and an old army t-shirt. Raylan, for his part, had removed the other boot and was lounging back against Tim’s couch, looking for all the world like he belonged there, and Tim felt his mouth start to dry at the thought. The lighting — Tim hated the brightness of overhead lights, preferring lamps where possible — was, for lack of a better word, intimate.

‘You seeing anyone?’ Raylan’s voice broke through Tim’s thoughts.

He snorted. ‘What do you think?’ He did not add that the last someone had been male and that, if he’d cared to have looked, Raylan would have seen him that night at the Dave Alvin set.

‘Two sad sack bachelors, I guess, then.’

‘True fact.’ Tim stood up and walked back to the kitchen. If this was going to be a heart to heart, he needed something stronger than the Miller Lite Suds had left in his fridge the last time he’d crashed on Tim’s couch. ‘Bourbon? All I got’s Jim Beam.’

‘Well, Tim, that would be mighty kind of you.’

Tim came back into the living room with two glasses and the mostly-full bottle of bourbon.

He poured a couple of splashes of bourbon into both glasses and handed one to Raylan. Their fingers brushed as Raylan took the glass, and lifted his gaze to meet Tim’s. Tim could see the flecks of gold and green in the brown in the soft glow of the table lamp.

‘To terrible sexual decisions,’ he said, bumping his glass against Raylan’s.

‘And the consequences thereof,’ Raylan finished, and flashed a lopsided smile at Tim that, despite his obvious exhaustion, caused his eyes to crinkle up at the corners in a way that didn’t exactly make him look younger, but definitely accented his features.

_Fucking hell_.

Tim downed the shot and put his glass down on the table, suddenly eager to put some space between himself and the one man spectacle that was Raylan Givens, urban cowboy. ‘Let me get you some blankets and pillows,’ he managed to get out, and he thought his voice sounded pretty flat and normal, all things considered. The bourbon had slipped down his gullet and was sitting warm in his belly, and he turned his back on Raylan as casually as he could and vanished to the hall closet.

‘The couch doesn’t pull out or nothing, but it isn’t that lumpy and should be long enough.’ Tim actually doubted that, but Raylan could cope. He pulled a spare set of sheets and a somewhat battered pillow off the top shelf. ‘Bathroom’s down the hall, spare towels under the sink.’

He closed the door to the closet and turned back to the living room.

Raylan had shed his jacket and his holster and dropped them next to Tim’s forgotten sidearm on the kitchen island. He was in the process of fiddling with his shirt buttons. 

Tim swallowed and paused in the doorway, just as Raylan looked up and met his gaze.

It wasn’t that Tim hadn’t seen Raylan undress before — they’d shared more than one shitty motel room on overnight prison transports, and there was that whole guard-against-the-Detroit-gun-thugs incident — but it was different to have him in Tim’s personal space, with the soft light of the lamp casting new shadows and highlighting the planes of his high cheekbones.

Raylan halted for a minute, three buttons left to go, and looked thoughtfully at Tim, who felt his own face grow hot. Raylan’s fingers resumed their work, but he held Tim’s gaze as he peeled the shirt from his shoulders. The thin cotton of his undershirt clung to his lanky frame.

Tim held still and kept his breathing even and shallow, although he was pretty sure he looked ridiculous standing there holding a pile of bedding. He could feel the heat gathering just under his belly. It had been awhile since he’d had this sort of reaction to anyone — man or woman — and he was pretty fucking annoyed that it was to Raylan Givens.

And, if he wasn’t mistaken, he was pretty sure Raylan — who had still not broken eye contact — knew what he was doing as he undid his belt buckle and pulled it through the loops of his jeans.

Tim wasn’t sure how he felt about that possibility, but he did know that he’d not had enough booze to even begin processing it.

He decided to break the spell himself before the gathering warmth made him visibly hard.

‘If you need a toothbrush, you’re shit out of luck,’ he said abruptly, walking over to the couch and dropping the pile unceremoniously in a heap on the end. But if Tim thought that was going to diffuse the growing tension, he was uncharacteristically mistaken.

‘Much obliged,’ Raylan said in his soft hill country accent, and fuck did he smell good. Which Tim had successfully managed not notice until he’d inadvertently breached his personal space with his linen delivery. He smelled like whiskey and sweat and the faint tang of aftershave — the smokey kind.

Tim felt his dick twitch. So, this was one of the ways Raylan Givens managed to get so many women to fall into bed with him.

He took a big step back, out of the Raylan Givens pheromone zone. Rubbed the back of his neck before he could catch himself, one of his few tells. ‘Uh, you need anything else?’

Raylan reached back down for the whiskey bottle. ‘Have another drink with me?’ He phrased it like a question, which Tim knew was an out if Tim wanted to take it. His jeans hung looser on his narrow hips without the belt, and Tim was starting to get the distinct impression that he was being  handled.

It was a terrible idea.

‘Yeah, okay.’

Raylan poured more Beam into both glasses before handing Tim his own, now holding a generous three fingers worth of bourbon. Raylan always had a heavy pour. He moved the pile of sheets onto an empty space on the coffee table and sat back down on the other end of the sofa.

Tim eyed the setup, and made a tactical decision not to walk awkwardly around the coffee table and retake his position in the arm chair. He sat down carefully on the other end of the couch and took a sip of his whiskey.

Raylan angled his long body towards Tim and watched him over the rim of his glass. ‘So you like brunettes? Because I seem to recall spottin’ you in a crowd once, maybe a year ago or so, with a blonde. Little roadhouse place half-way to Louisville.’

Tim kept his breathing even. So, Raylan had noticed. Now Tim knew he was being handled. ‘Oh, is that so?’

Raylan took another sip of his whiskey, clearly considering whether he really wanted to _go there_ and Tim watched him. Raylan had a lot of tells, and Tim could have predicted the next sentence out of his mouth by the twitch of his fingers against his leg.

‘Tall, ‘bout your age. Good lookin’ fella.’

Well, there it was. Tim was pretty goddamned closeted, and he always thought he’d be a lot tenser when the line between his personal and private lives finally blurred. Not even Rachel knew. But this was not how he had expected it to go down, and instead of tensed, Tim was looking at Raylan and Raylan was looking back at him, and he knew that this wasn’t going to play out like he always feared it might.

He downed the rest of his shot. ‘Raylan, are you trying — in your awkward, overly-polite, country boy way — to ask me if I am queer?’

Raylan squirmed slightly and smiled awkwardly. ‘Suppose I might be.’

Tim leaned forward and looked into Raylan’s dark eyes. ‘Why does it much matter to you whether I am or not?’

Raylan sat up straighter. ‘Just friendly curiosity, I guess.’ He leaned forward a bit, mirroring Tim’s posture and licked his lips. Tim kept his eyes on Raylan’s. ‘Well, perhaps a little more than friendly.’

Tim felt every muscle in his body thrumming. Tried to cover it with a joke. ‘Your girlfriend leaves you her brick shithouse of an ex, steals your money in the process, and you — ‘

He didn’t finish the sentence as Raylan closed the remaining distance between them and kissed him. He tasted like whiskey and Tim felt his mouth parting slightly, inviting Raylan in, Raylan pushed forward, his hand rising to cradle the back of Tim’s neck. 

Goddamn.

Tim leaned in and his hand came up to encircle Raylan’s wrist. He licked into his mouth and then pulled back gently. He wasn’t much for talking, but he felt like something needed to be said. If only because this was not how Tim had expected his evening to go.

Raylan had his eyes closed, dark eyelashes against his cheeks. When he reopened his eyes, his pupils were blown, the black nearly overwhelming the warmth of the hazel.

‘As I was saying,’ Tim continued drily, but left his fingers to curl around Raylan’s wrist — the pulse was rapid against his fingertips — ‘you come here to, what, test a theory? You just couldn’t be alone?’

Raylan’s thumb stroked into the shorter hair at the back of his neck, and Tim fought the urge to lean back into it. It had been a long time since anyone had touched him that delicately. ‘I didn’t come here with ulterior motives, if that’s what you’re asking,’ Raylan said, letting his hand trail down Tim’s neck to his collarbone. ‘Just needed a place to crash.’

‘If this is about worming your way into the bed...’

Raylan’s eyes creased as the corners of his lips turned upwards into a smile. ‘Shut up, Tim.’ He leaned back in and kissed him again, as his hand wandered down between their bodies to wrap around Tim’s waist and pull him closer so their chests were flush together.

The kiss turned harder, and Tim felt himself opening up as Raylan pushed forward into his mouth. He felt his own hands snake up into Raylan’s hair, almost to anchor him in place. Fuck, it was so good and it had been  so long, and Raylan’s hands at his waist were sliding up under his T-shirt.

This was such a profoundly terrible idea.

Tim broke away again and stood up quickly. His shorts were tented. Raylan looked startled, dismayed and ridiculous in equal measure, his hair standing up in tufts where Tim had worked his fingers into it.

He looked at Raylan and made a decision. 

‘Well? Are you coming?’ And he turned around and walked down the hall towards his bedroom. He didn’t bother to look to see if Raylan would follow him — he knew he would.

——

Tim stares back at Raylan’s message on his phone and downs the rest of his beer. He puts his phone back down on the bar and shrugs his jacket on, pulling it straight at the lapels. He’s pretty drunk, but he isn’t legless.

He picks the phone back up and hits reply.

_ Yeah, okay. _

And hits send.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 2 of 6.
> 
> Tim works through some memories.

Tim woke up at 6.00 am like he always did, startled at the realisation that there was another body in the bed with him. One that was snoring gently against his ear, face buried in his neck, one arm thrown loosely around his waist, legs tangled together.

Raylan was spooning. Raylan was spooning Tim.

It was actually kind of funny.

And Tim was reluctant to move him, warm as he was. He wasn’t much for cuddling normally, but Raylan was sort of an all-encompassing presence, and Tim found the rise and fall of his chest against his bare back comforting. He shifted slightly, and the arm around his waist tightened reflexively and pulled Tim’s hips closer. Tim could feel the heavy weight of Raylan’s dick against his ass, semi-hard to start the morning.

Tim felt his own dick twitch at the contact, and he shifted against the body in the bed behind him. 

The previous night hadn’t taken long. 

Raylan had gotten Tim stripped of boxers and T-shirt, had pushed him back on the mattress and had swallowed Tim down with an economy of movement that was in stark contrast to his normal languid insouciance. He was kind of clumsy at it, as if he was a bit out of practice, but he had worked at Tim with tongue and hand until Tim felt his balls tighten, and his hands grip the rumpled sheets and he had barely managed to choke out a warning that Raylan ignored before he was coming harder than he had in a long time.

He’d returned the favour with equal enthusiasm, and they’d fallen asleep with limbs tangled. At some point, it was clear that Raylan had wriggled out of his boxers because Tim was pretty sure he’d only worked them as far as his knees before he’d got his mouth around Raylan’s cock and things hadn’t lasted all that long after that.

But in the cold light of morning, which was creeping in under the curtains, he wasn’t sure how he felt about it, and he was reluctant to move and break the spell.

Tim had never casually fucked a co-worker — the Army didn’t count because he and Mark were more-than-casual — and he wasn’t sure of the etiquette. Were they just going to pretend it didn’t happen? Was shit going to be awkward? Would Rachel — or, god forbid, _Art_ — be able smell it on them?

Raylan let out a grumble and turned over on his back, the arm holding Tim to him following its owner up and over to rest just above his hip. His ring was heavy and warm against Tim’s skin.

‘Shit, what time is it?’ he croaked, his voice still heavy with sleep.

‘6 am.’ Tim answered without turning around. ‘You can sleep a bit longer if you want.’

Raylan let out a yawn that ruffled Tim’s hair.  ‘I should probably get an early start. Have some tracking to do. And Rachel said she’d help me out.’ He lifted his hand off of Tim’s hip and immediately it felt cooler without it.  


Tim rolled upright and swung his legs over the side of the bed. The spell had been broken.

‘I’ll make some coffee,’ he said, moving to stand up.

Raylan reached over and wrapped his hand around his wrist and gave a gentle tug. Tim looked down at him for the first time in the grey light of morning. His hair was a mess, and there was a crease in his stubbly cheek from the pillow, and Tim felt a deep and abiding affection for him in that moment that he tried to tamp down.

‘Hey, we okay?’ There was a faint hint ofvulnerability in the question.

Tim leaned over and kissed him, closed mouth, and pulled away. ‘Yeah, Raylan, we’re okay.’ He stood up, unbothered by his nakedness. ‘Now go take a shower. You look like shit.’

——

7 am and Tim is back in his stakeout spot, and nothing has fucking changed. Dunlop had been relieved around 1.00 am by Fisher, the guy that now rode Rachel’s desk, and Tim had relieved Fisher at 6.30, which was earlier than he’d needed to, but he hadn’t been asleep and figured it would be a nice gesture. Fisher has kids he likes to drive to school and it’s cute and touching in a way that makes Tim feel sort of nauseous.

He’d been thinking about Raylan again. And the son of a bitch still hasn’t texted him back. Just left it there, no details to help Tim plan his schedule. Just that fucking bombshell that he is coming to Lexington and he wants to see Tim.

After four fucking years of radio silence.

Tim leans back against the headrest and broods.

They hadn’t talked about it after that first time. Raylan had come into the kitchen where Tim was reading the paper, downed the cup of coffee Tim had left out for him on the kitchen counter, grabbed his jacket and his sidearm, ran his hand up the back of Tim’s head, ruffling his hair, and split.

And then everything basically went to shit in a matter of days. Tim found himself preoccupied with Mark, who had called that evening to tell Tim he was in the shit again and off the wagon. The team in general found themselves dealing with the spiralling Drew Thompson case. And then Arlo was murdered and Tim felt Raylan grow distant, darker, more withdrawn.

And for Tim...Something cold and familiar had slithered back into his psyche when he had put down Colton Rhodes. He felt himself regressing, and he wasn’t sure he liked it all that much.

Whatever it was that had prompted Raylan to seek out Tim’s company faded into the background as everything else fell apart.

By the time the dust had settled, it was almost too awkward to mention it. And life went back to normal like it had never happened.

——

‘What did you do?’

Raylan turned to look at him, car key not quite in the door. ‘Tim,’ he acknowledged. He sounded strained, angry, but Tim couldn’t see his face in the weak light of the parking lot.

‘What did you do?’ Tim repeated, softer this time. ‘To get Art so fucking angry he couldn’t even stand to be in the same room with you? To get him so angry he took that detail by himself? Got himself shot?’

Raylan leaned forward against the hood of the town car. He looked defeated. And if Tim hadn’t been so fucking pissed at him, he would have felt bad about it.

‘Tim, just don’t.’

Tim moved closer to the car. ‘Goddamn. It must have been bad.’

Raylan slapped his palm against the roof in frustration. It sounded like it hurt. ‘Whatdya want me to say, Tim? Do you want me to feel guilty? Because I already feel fucking guilty.’

Tim closed the few remaining feet and leaned against the trunk. He glared at Raylan, being such a pigheaded, self-pitying son of a bitch, with Art lying there all tubed up in the ICU. ‘Okay, so tell me about it.’

Raylan gave a huff that wasn’t really a laugh and did a piss-poor job masquerading as one.

Tim looked at him over the roof of the car. Raylan’s hat was tilted back on his head, and he seemed reluctant to look back at him. Raylan always was like a little kid, squirming away as soon as things got too heavy.

And boy, had shit gotten heavy.

‘See, I’ve been thinking —‘ Tim said with false joviality ‘— We have the Detroit Mafia oozing around in a backwater like Lexington mere months after one of their own was pumped full of holes on an airport runway outside of Harlan. And now, with Art lying unconscious and shot in a hospital bed, we have the Detroit Chief on his way down here to oversee the office during this moment of crisis. And meanwhile, you’ve been skulking around looking like you railed the pastor’s daughter in the choir room. So. Yeah. What did you do? Because I’m gonna go out on a limb and assume Detroit was involved somewhere.’

Raylan looked up at him. His eyes narrowed as he weighed up what to say. ‘Well. You are good at your job, Deputy Gutterson.’

Tim snorted. ‘Man, how many times I gotta keep telling you that before you start believing in me? It hurts my feelings. Makes me feel like I can’t spread my wings and really fly.’

Raylan stood there a moment. Considered. His shoulders slumped as he made a decision. ‘Get in the car, Tim.’

‘What, you gonna shoot me, too?’

’Tempting offer, but no.’

’Cause based on a pure statistical analysis, I’m gonna just take you shooting someone as read.’

‘No, I didn’t shoot anyone,’ Raylan sounded put-out and not in the mood for Tim’s particular brand of obnoxious needling. ‘I’m gonna tell you what you want to know, so you will stop hectoring me and we can get to the bottom of this shit. Now get in the car.’

Raylan yanked  the door open and folded his long body into the front seat, clearly expecting Tim’s curiosity and generally misplaced loyalty to lead him to follow.

Tim glared at the back of his head — goddamned hat still on — through the windshield. ‘Fine’, he said aloud to himself, throwing up his hands, and walked around to the front passenger door to let himself in.

Raylan didn’t say anything as Tim buckled his seatbelt. Just started the engine and reversed out of there.

In fact, he didn’t say anything at all until the door was closed on his shithole apartment above the college bar. The bar was closed, as it was going on midnight, the windows dark and empty. The whole street looked deserted and Tim wondered briefly if Raylan really was going to shoot him. It would probably solve at least some of their problems.

Tim had followed Raylan wordlessly up the stairs, his combat boots echoing hollowly on the wooden slats.

Raylan stood aside to let Tim into the small space, which lacked anywhere to sit that wasn’t the bed or a small chair, already piled high with dirty laundry. Tim raised an eyebrow at him as he closed the door.

‘Well, this is cozy.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Raylan said, looking sort of embarrassed. He lifted the pile of clothes off the chair, and stood there awkwardly for a second, searching for some place else to stash it that wasn’t the floor. A sock came loose and landed limply at his feet.

It looked so sad.

‘It’s fine, dude,’ Tim took pity on him.

Raylan dropped the pile back onto the chair, and walked over to the dresser. He poured two glasses of bourbon and handed one of them to Tim, who took it gratefully. It felt weird being this close together in a room with just a bed, presumably not to fuck, but to have Raylan confess his deepest darkest sins all the same.

Raylan didn’t bother to toast, just drank his down and poured himself another.

‘So,’ Tim said and drank his own. It burned on the way down.

‘So,’ Raylan echoed and sat down heavily on the bed. ‘What do you know and what do you think you know, and let’s start from there.’

Tim looked at him. Considered what he wanted to say and ultimately decided to just lay his cards in the table. ‘Well, I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume it has something to do with Nicky Augustine getting the Sonny Corleone treatment a few months back?’

Raylan sipped at his drink and rubbed his free hand slowly on his denim-clad leg. He nodded slowly. ‘Nicky was no James Caan, but otherwise you are correct. After the whole Drew Thompson thing, Augustine sent a couple of his guys after Winona. They held a gun at her stomach — at my baby girl — and used her to get to me.’

Tim sighed, grabbed the bottle off the dresser and sat down next to Raylan on the bed. ‘Shit. I didn’t realise.’ Now he really did feel bad for giving him crap. Sort of. Art was still unconscious, after all.

‘I mean, obviously I shot them...well, Winona also shot them. But, then the opportunity came to get rid of Augustine for good. And I took it.’ Raylan’s voice was flat and devoid of emotion, like he was testifying in court.

‘Heavy firepower ain’t normally your style.’

Raylan sighed and took the hat off his head, tossed it at the bedpost and missed by about three inches. ‘No, not my style, but it is Sammy Tonin’s style. I think he’s seen  _ Scarface _ one too many times.’

Tim looked at him sideways, didn’t bother to refill his glass, just took a swig out of the bottle. ‘What a sad, pathetic cliche.’ He handed it off to Raylan. ‘Don’t none of these mob guys watch to the end of the goddamned movie?’

Raylan took his own drink from the bottle, the muscles in his throat working as he swallowed. ‘Anyway, I was not an innocent in that.’ He sounded defeated.

Tim moved to take the bottle back, his fingers wrapping around Raylan’s. ‘So that’s what you meant when you implied that Art wouldn’t have done the same for us?’ He phrased it like a question, but said it flat like a statement.

Raylan released the bourbon bottle and Tim brought it back to his lips. The third shot burned less going down than the first two. ‘I dunno, really. But he doesn’t have much of a moral grey area, as it turns out.’

Tim grinned to himself, took another drink. ‘Can’t say I’m all that surprised. Why’d you even tell him?’ He handed the bottle back.

‘Dunno,’ Raylan said, and met Tim’s eyes for the first time since he’d sat down. ‘It just seemed like a good idea, I suppose.’

Tim looked at him, unshaven and rough and felt a surge of some perverse mix of objective pity and outright desire. He tamped both those emotions down as it didn’t seem like the time or the place for either of them. ‘Well, that was fucking stupid.’

Raylan looked startled for a moment before he burst into a genuine guffaw. ‘Jesus Christ, Tim. I’m sitting here pouring my heart out to you and confessing my deep abiding guilt and that’s what you leave me with?’

‘If you wanted a hug, you should have confessed to Rachel.’

Raylan leaned down to put the bottle on the floor by their feet. He straightened back up and looked over at Tim. ‘You really aren’t mad at me?’

Tim reached over and awkwardly patted Raylan’s shoulder. ‘Oh, perk up, you. I  _ am  _ mad at you, but I’m not sure I could do anything to make you feel worse than you’re already feeling. Also, the guy went after your kid. Getting Swiss-cheesed seems like an easy way out, all things considered. It’s what happens at the end of all those movies.’

And because Tim was now feeling a sort of comradely affection for Raylan at that moment, he gave the shoulder underneath his palm a companionable squeeze.

And with that little bit of physical contact, the atmosphere suddenly changed.

Tim’s hand tightened on Raylan’s shoulder again, less companionably this time, and he could feel the heat of the man through his jacket.

Unconsciously, he licked his lips as his mouth went dry.

Raylan’s eyes darted down to Tim’s mouth and back up again, and Tim felt himself go hard. When they met, it wasn’t clear who was kissing whom or who initiated what. It was just a sudden tangle of fingers and tongue and teeth, pulling at clothing and biting at skin.

Tim couldn’t shed his jacket fast enough, and his effort was hampered by Raylan yanking at it blindly, even as he ran his tongue down Tim’s neck. 

_Jesus CHRIST_.

As soon as his arms were free, Tim yanked at Raylan’s denim lapels and pushed him down flat on the bed, looping one leg over his hips to straddle him.

‘Fuck, Gutterson.’

‘Mmmpf.’ Tim’s hands were wandering up and under Raylan’s shirt, even as his mouth was pressed into his collarbone. He hissed as Tim bit down. Tim could feel his hard-on pressed up against his inner thigh.

‘Tim,’ Raylan tried again and it came out more like a moan that went straight to his dick. But it was enough to make Tim pause and look up.

Raylan gripped Tim’s hips and pulled him back down, hard. The pressure was incredible. He did it again, and Tim gripped his bottom lip between is teeth and groaned. 

Raylan pushed himself upright, catching Tim in a full, open-mouthed kiss as he tried to struggle out of his own jacket. Once he managed to get it off, he reached forward to pull Tim’s shirt over his head. It was not a graceful moment, and in his haste, he managed to get Tim tangled in his shirt sleeves. Just like in the movies.

‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ he swore, trying to get the long sleeved Henley unhooked from his watch strap. Raylan reached forward for him again. ‘Uh uhh,’ Tim snapped, pressing his assfirmly down on Raylan’s lap and earning another low moan. ‘This is your fault. Deal with your own self.’

In lieu of a comeback, Raylan leaned forward and licked an obscene stripe under his ear and along his jaw that caused Tim to shiver, his arms still tangled between them. But then pulled back and complied, yanking his shirt up and over his head.

Tim freed his arms and threw the offending garment across the room, where it landed on top Raylan’s cluttered dresser. ‘Right,’ he said, surveying the landscape below and taking stock of the new situation — of a now shirtless Raylan, who fell back onto his elbows. Tim leaned forward, hovering over him on his hands and kissed him again, slower this time, but just as filthy.

Raylan reached up and brushed his dog tags away, tracing his fingertips down Tim’s ribs, causing him to shiver again, before moving down still further to slide under the waistband of his jeans.

Tim rocked forward again, as Raylan’s hand gripped the bare skin along his hip. Their breathing was ragged in between kisses. Tim couldn’t get a enough of the feel of him, lean and hard under his chest, so much different than it had been with Mark, stocky and compact. He reached down between their bodies to fiddle with Raylan’s belt, which gave way easily, and then his fly, which did not.

‘Shit.’ He pulled away again and sat up so he could work with both hands and a bit of light. ‘What man still goes for the full button fly?’ he grumbled. ‘It amazes me you ever get laid at all.’

Raylan grinned again and propped his head up under his arm, watching Tim, ever efficient, get all of the buttons undone. ‘I dunno, doesn’t seem to have slowed you down none.’

Tim looked at him pointedly and realised that he was still wearing his boots, which was inconvenient since they were practical for the field and  _ laced, goddamit. _

He clambered off of Raylan and swung his legs over the side of the bed to deal with them. He could feel, rather than see Raylan toeing his cowboy boots off with a practiced ease that was in equal parts infuriating and sexy as hell. They landed with a thump on the floor.

Tim managed to undo the double knot and get one boot off. 

He felt the mattress depress behind him as Raylan dug his heels into it, pushing his hips off of the wrinkled duvet to pull both jeans and boxers down his legs and over his feet.

Tim watched as he let the bundle of clothes sail over his head and onto the already overburdened laundry chair. He managed to undo the lace on the other boot and kick it off. 

He stood up and turned around to look at Raylan, stretched out naked and unselfconscious on the bed. He was fucking beautiful, a few scars here and there just adding to the allure. A dusting of hair started just below his belly button and widened as it moved lower. He had almost no spare adipose anywhere, which Tim thought was decidedly unfair given the shear volume of barbecue chips and vanilla ice cream Tim had seen him put away on a single stakeout.

Raylan watched him look. ‘You gonna take your pants off?’

His voice startled Tim out of his reverie, and he got to work on his own fly, before sliding his jeans down his legs. He was rock hard, and his boxers were harder to get over his erection, but he managed it with only a modicum of awkwardness before he was back in bed, stretched head to toe and naked with Raylan goddamned Givens.

——

There is a movement up ahead, and Tim lifts the binoculars to get a better look. It’s the neighbour again for the third time that morning, heading down to check the mailbox.

She’s old, uses a walker.

‘Could it have come in the thirty minutes since I last looked? That’s the million dollar question,’ he narrates to himself, watches her open the little door and peer myopically inside.‘Has the  Reader’s Digest  arrived to help pass the hour? Could use a new Chinese takeout menu.’

She closes the door empty handed and begins the slow shuffle back up the drive.

‘And better luck next time. Join us again for our next showing in 30 minutes. 30 minutes, audience, plenty of time to get yourself some cotton candy, freshly shaved from a clown’s — ‘

Shit. 

He looks closer, and there it is again. The curtain flicks on the house he’s watching. Just a breath, but it’s the most action Tim has seen from the place since they started this stakeout. Someone inside must be watching the old lady as well. He reaches for his cellphone, keen to avoid the radio in case they’re monitoring different frequencies. 

Calls Dunlop, let’s him know to bring back up. Settles in and waits.

——

Tim’s head hurt. And his shoulder hurt — the one that hadn’t gotten hit by a bullet in Afghanistan. And his truck was totalled.

He was lying on the couch in his living room staring at the ceiling and trying to visualise the pain and isolate it so it would go the fuck away. An old meditation technique to manage migraines that Mark had taught him back in the Sandbox, before Mark’s leg had got all shot to hell and he’d been sent home with an injury no meditation technique could help. 

He felt like such an idiot, outrun by a shitkicking dolt like Daryl Crowe Jr. His pride was hurt more than his body, and his truck more than his pride and his body combined.

He’d need a new one.

But, Art was awake. Daryl was dead. Kendall was free and his truck seemed like a small sacrifice. 

There was a soft knock at his front door and he startled off the couch, jarring his injured shoulder in the process. 

‘Tim?’ There was another knock, slightly louder this time.

Of-fucking-course. 

He got up stiffly and walked over to the door and swung it open.

Raylan was standing there in the doorway, hitched up on one leg and a six pack of beer in his hand. He was wearing that fucking Levi’s jacket straight out of 1992 that Tim refused to admit he actually kind of liked. Would have looked ridiculous on any other forty-something adult, but such was Raylan’s sartorial power.

‘Why hello,’ Tim said. And inwardly flinched when he realised he sounded just like Boyd fucking Crowder.

Raylan reached up to take his hat off of his head with one hand and held up the six pack of beer with the other. It was a local microbrew — although Tim wasn’t picky about his imbibing, he knew that Raylan could be. ‘Just checking up on you. Wanted to know if you could do with a little company.’

Tim was tired and sore, but the idea of Raylan checking up on him made him feel kind of warm inside. Not warm enough to stop glaring at him though.

But he stepped aside so Raylan could come in, which he did nonchalantly as if they hadn’t wound up tangled together in Tim’s bed the one and only other time he’d been there.

‘They give you anything for the pain?’ Raylan asked as Tim let the door swing shut.

‘Codeine, but I haven’t taken it for since this afternoon. Had enough of that shit when I got hit in Afghanistan. Makes me nauseous.’

Raylan sat down on the armchair and tossed his hat on the coffee table. ‘Then have a beer with me.’

Tim moved gingerly to the kitchen and dug around for a bottle opener. 

He stepped over Raylan’s sprawled legs and took his vacated position on the couch, propping himself back up on the pillows he’d fetched from his bed. He tossed the bottle opener at Raylan, who caught it neatly. 

‘I didn’t know you got hit in Afghanistan,’ he said, prying the caps off two bottles and leaning forward to hand one to Tim. 

Tim took it and sipped — it was hoppy and sour and he fought the urge to make a face.

‘Flesh wound. I was barely out of action for two weeks.’ He took another sip of his beer — it went down easier this time. ‘You telling me you didn’t notice the scar?’

It was a flippant and remarkably direct thing to say. They didn’t talk about...this. Whatever this was or wasn’t. Nevermind that Tim knew what Raylan tasted like, and Raylan could say the same about Tim.

Raylan looked at him askance and took a sip of his beer. Tim glared back at him. Too grumpy and uncomfortable and sore to give a shit about crossing some line they’d never actually agreed upon.

‘Can’t say I looked too closely,’ Raylan said. ‘Too busy focusing on other things.’

Tim huffed. Drank his beer.

Raylan looked at him thoughtfully, and Tim’s face went warm. He was feeling cranky and petulant and he wanted Raylan to fuck off and leave him to his aches in peace. Except he also really didn’t want him to do that at all.

‘You got something you want to say to me?’ he settled for being childish.

‘Why didn’t you call me when you got hit?’ 

Tim sighed and stared at the bottle in his hands. ‘I didn’t want to presume.’ The label was peeling in the upper corner. He started picking at it.

Raylan scoffed. ‘Presume what, that I’d care you were hurt?’

Tim glanced up at him. Looked back down at the label, which was coming apart in small curls. His head still hurt. Too much, really, for this fucking conversation. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t want to presume that because I’d sucked your cock, you’d feel beholden to ride to my side in my hour of goddamned need.’ He glanced back up at Raylan through his eyelashes.

Raylan was looking at him, the corners of his mouth turned up slightly. He got out of the armchair and moved towards the couch, where Tim’s feet were propped up against the armrest. He wrapped his arm around Tim’s knees, lifted them out of the way and sat down, settling back against the cushions with Tim’s legs now stretched out over his lap.

‘Dude,’ Tim lacked the wherewithal to object more stringently to this invasion of his  _ home _ and his  _personal_ _space_ and his  _ tastebuds _ thanks to this goddamned IPA Raylan had guilted him into drinking.

Raylan stretched his long, denim-clad legs out and propped his feet on the coffee table. 

‘Christ Tim, I sucked your cock first you know, you could at least act like it meant something.’

‘I have a few pointers.’

Raylan rested his arm on Tim’s shin and angled his body to look incredulously at him. ‘You didn’t seem to have any objections at the time.’

Tim downed the rest of the beer, put the bottle down on the floor next to him, and shifted in against the pillows. If his heel brushed against Raylan’s thigh in the process, it was obviously an accident. So he did it again.

‘Yeah, well,’ he finished lamely.

‘Christ, that all you can come up with? You really must have hit your head harder than I realised.’

Tim looked up at him again. Wished he had taken the codeine. ‘By the way, you got a call while you were out. Picked it up as Rachel and I were leaving for the hospital to see Art.’

Raylan ran a hand across Tim’s shins. ‘Oh yeah?’

‘Dan, chief from the Miami office. Wants you to call him back at your earliest convenience.’

‘Yeah, Art asked me if he’d called. Says he’s got a place down there for me whenever I’m ready to go. Not quite sure how I feel about it now that the opportunity has presented itself.’

Tim let out a low whistle and let his head rest back against the pillows and stared at a water stain in his ceiling. ‘I dunno, doesn’t seem like that tough of a call,’ he said. ‘What with your little girl down there and all.’ He paused. ‘And Winona.’

He felt Raylan run his hand up his shin again, and rest it on his knee. ‘Yeah, and Winona,’ he said after a pause. 

Tim brushed his heel against Raylan’s lap again, and then a fourth time. The hand on his knee tightened. 

‘But you’re not leaving yet,’ Tim said.

Raylan’s hand drifted off his knee and down his thigh. ‘No, not quite yet.’

———

Tim is still waiting for Dunlop when his phone buzzes in the centre console. He picks it up to look at it.

_Friday work for you?  
_

Tim tosses the phone onto the dashboard. He’ll reply later.


	3. Chapter 3

Tim gets back door duty when they finally get to take the house because there’s a nice natural sniper’s nest back there that is just calling his name. Technically, Dunlop is the ranking Marshal on this, but Dunlop tends to accept that Tim is just better at a lot of this shit than he is and lets Tim lay out how things go.

It’s a bit touch and go with the negotiator, but in the end, they take the house without firing a shot, which is always the sign of a pretty good goddamned day, even if Tim ends it with twigs and leaves tangled in his hair.

He considers calling Reagan and telling her that they finished earlier than expected, but he doesn’t trust himself not to ruin her work trip to Nashville by blurting out that he wants to end things because he still has sexual hangups from four years ago that involve his partner who — no shit — wore a cowboy hat unironically.

But then, maybe he should tell her that he wants to end it, let her rebound with her own cowboy-hatted aspiring country music star, proving once and for all that the thing they have most in common is a sexual attraction to a certain  type.

 _Of_ _man_.

But in the end, Tim chickens out and texts Suds instead. Suds, who served as Tim’s spotter during his third tour in Afghanistan — after Mark got sent back — lives in Louisville and is always up for a drink. He has three kids and a fiancée with a brother in the Marine Corps who just seems to  get that you just gotta go drink with your army buddies when they call, even on short notice.

Plus, they have a guest room and Jennifer always makes waffles in the morning when Tim crashes in it. All in all, it’s usually a pretty good start to the weekend and it beats his empty apartment where he’d no doubt just get drunk alone and jerk off again to memories of Raylan.

He takes out his phone and realises he never replied to Raylan either, and he’s sort of pleased with himself that he managed to go nearly six hours without brooding about him.

The message blinks up at him. He sighs and hits reply.

_ Yeah, I guess that works. Criminal malfeasance permitting. You got a place in mind? _

He pauses, wonders if that sentence is leading. Like, subtext for ‘so, are you angling for a fuck?’ Decides he is probably overthinking it and leaves it in.

He angles his wrist to glance at his watch. It’s only 4pm, and he can definitely get to Suds’ by 6, which is when it is more respectable to begin propping up the bar.

His phone buzzes again.

_ Yeah, flying in Thursday night and then Tramble Friday. Should be back late afternoon. Anywhere you think is good works for me. _

Tim hates this...stiltedness. It doesn’t feel like them. He wonders if Raylan is also overthinking his replies, wonders if Raylan thinks about him at all like that anymore.

The ache in his chest is back, like bad heartburn. He had done so well NOT thinking about Raylan and his stupid fucking hat and his swagger and the feel of him against his back and the low groan he makes when he is just on the edge of coming. And here he is thinking only about Raylan and how he probably isn’t over it and how seeing him is probably an epically bad idea that will fuck Tim up royally — emotionally, anyway — for the better part of yet another year.

And yet, because Tim can’t say no to a challenge and is also kind of a masochist, he’s going to run headlong into that firefight like he’s 19 again and fucking invincible.

He decides to ignore Raylan for now and texts Suds instead.

_ You thirsty?  _

——

Tim had been in Raylan’s childhood home before, but usually only after some sort of catastrophic tragedy, blood leaking in between the oak floorboards, so he didn’t really get to grips with its charms until he wound up bunking there while trailing Boyd. 

The view out of the living room window was breathtaking, the breeze on the front porch brisk and clean and always cool. In every way, it was a world away from Tim’s own childhood abode in an East Texas pre-fab, where it was nearly always too hot and humid and the view consisted of some highway and a chemical plant.

Tim was going on three years in Kentucky and the mountains — even the ones that had been blasted to shit and were lopsided at the top — never ceased to wow him. The green helped. Made it seem a world away from Afghanistan.

Rachel sent him down on his own less than a week after the crash with a ridiculous looking truck from the surveillance pool that looked out of place everywhere but Harlan, where it seemed to fit in. He’d arrived after dark, the air carrying an edge of briskness in the transition to fall, and had climbed the stairs and let himself in to the old Givens place.

It was completely silent out in the middle of nowhere — not even crickets this late in the year — and dark apart from the canopy of stars overhead before the moon rose.

Tim sort of loved it.

That first night he’d sat on the porch and watched the stars dance across the sky, drinking directly from a bottle of scotch he’d found in the back of the cupboard. Aunt Helen’s probably. He’d dozed off about 2 am and woke up about six, shivering, dew coating his jeans.

The second night he got back from a full day of sitting around the corner from Johnny’s — Boyd didn’t move the whole time, he was clearly living there — the house still empty, and decided to have a discrete poke around. He lied to himself and said it was general curiosity, but he pretty much started and ended with the small bedroom at the end of the hall.

It was close and dusty and there were baseball pennants on the wall, two bats and some old beat up baseball gloves stacked in the corner.

He poked around the small wooden bookshelf and dug through some dime store westerns and a few stolen library books before coming away with an old beat up copy of  Dracula  which didn’t seem very much like Raylan and several Raymond Chandlers which absolutely did.

He stacked his small haul on the floor and went over to the bed. It squeaked as he sat down on the dusty bedspread and opened up one of the drawers in the bedside table. There was a flashlight (didn’t work), some rubber bands which looked like they’d turn to dust if he touched them, and a stack of snapshots curling at the corners.

Tim reached for the the pictures and flicked through them. There were several of a pretty woman with dark hair and dark eyes, a shy smile. In one she was holding the hand of a little boy — Raylan, presumably, already rocking the Canadian tuxedo at the age of about five. In another she had an arm around an absolute stunner of a woman with a cigarette and a worldly expression that had no business in Harlan.

Tim had only met Aunt Helen a few times before Dickie Bennett gunned her down in the kitchen, but he recognised her immediately.

He put the pictures back, feeling like he was intruding, and reached under the drawer instead.

Raylan was still hiding shit in the same exact places, only instead of a file he wasn’t supposed have, it felt like a magazine. Tim rolled his eyes and yanked at the glossy pages beneath his hand, triumphantly dislodging an absolutely ancient copy of  Playboy.  July 1987. Carmen Berg, blonde and leggy.

Because, of course.

It was pretty well-thumbed, and Tim felt his jeans grow tighter at the thought of a younger Raylan lying in bed, alone, and jerking off to the magazine in front of him while trying to keep quiet.

Older Raylan wasn’t particularly quiet when he was coming, and Tim couldn’t imagine that had changed all that much.

He put it back in its hiding place and closed the drawer.

He retrieved his haul of books from the floor, and flicked out the light before heading back downstairs. The moon had risen and it was light enough to read by through the enormouspicture window in the living room. Tim rolled out his sleeping bag on the couch and stripped down to his boxers, the chill of the empty house causing his nipples to harden and goosebumps to materialise on his legs.

He wandered into the bathroom off the kitchen, brushed his teeth and washed his face in cold, clear well water.

This was a lovely house. Honestly, if it were anywhere but Harlan, Tim would have offered to buy it off of Raylan in a minute. If it were anywhere but Harlan it woulda sold by now. Sure, it needed work, and Tim was kind of loathe to use a blacklight on the walls or the living room floor, but it was a house from another time, creaky and battered and Tim loved it.

He climbed under the sleeping bag and read by the light of the moon until he fell asleep.

The third night, he saw a light on in the living room, and a town car parked along the dirt road leading up to the house. 

He opened the door.

Raylan was lying on the sofa, using Tim’s rolled up sleeping bag as a pillow and reading the copy of  _ The Long Goodbye  _ that Tim had fallen asleep with the night before. He couldn’t remember if he’d dog eared the page he’d ended on, or not. His eyes flickered to Tim in the doorway and he smiled. It was a warm, uncomplicated smile and Tim felt his stomach flutter.

‘You save my place?’ he asked, enjoying the sight of Raylan stretched out long and easy on the sofa.

‘Gas station receipt. Don’t lose it. Need it for expenses.’

Tim leaned against the door frame and crossed his arms over his chest. ‘What are you doing here? The delights of Harlan prove irresistible?’

Raylan closed the book and placed it carefully back on the coffee table. ‘Hadn’t heard from you. Wanted to make sure you weren’t in distress, chained up in Boyd’s back room.’ He swung his long legs to the floor and sat up, stretching.

Tim watched as his t-shirt tightened over his chest, riding up a little at the front as his back arched.

‘As you can see, all is well, if a bit low-fi.’ Tim shrugged off his jacket. ‘I’ve been using my phone as a hotspot. Couldn’t stream porn.’ He draped his jacket over the armchair and moved to unclip his holster. ‘Had to find yours.’

Raylan stood up. ‘Oh, is that right?’

‘So many blondes, Raylan.’

‘Can’t a man have a preference?’ he asked, crossing the room.

Tim held his ground. ‘There are preferences and then there are fetishes.’

Raylan reached him and wrapped one hand around his waist, his eyes holding Tim’s. Tim let himself be crowded up against the door frame. ‘You’re not blonde.’

Tim could feel his muscles tensing with Raylan so close. His hand was warm against his side. ‘I am blonde-adjacent.’

Raylan let out a huff of laughter and leaned down to kiss the spot along Tim’s jaw that always, _always_ made him shiver. ‘In the right light maybe.’

Tim felt his eyes flutter shut as Raylan nipped at his pulse point. The hand around his waist turned him — Tim didn’t exactly fight it — and pushed him gently against the doorjamb.

Christ, a few fumbles and suddenly Raylan knew all of Tim’s hot spots. It must be some sort of special fucking talent. Tim let his hand drift up to Raylan’s hip, slotting it into his back pocket like something out of an 80s teen movie. But the curve of Raylan’s ass felt good against his palm, and it encouraged Raylan to push forward against Tim’s leg, already hardening in his jeans.

Tim pressed his leg against the bulge and slowly straightened his knee to draw out the friction. Raylan groaned against his neck.

He squeezed the muscle underneath his hand, and Raylan dragged his head up, rubbing his stubbly cheek against Tim’s in the process. It might leave a whisker burn in the morning, but it felt good enough that Tim didn’t much care. Raylan’s brown eyes looked almost gold in the soft living room light. Tim felt his breath getting shallower as he looked back into them, he was so fucking beautiful.

However, while they could fool around and get each other off, with Raylan being both a fellow Marshal and a new father with a questionably-ex ex-wife, that was all this could ever be. Tim wasn’t stupid. A little reckless maybe, but not stupid. He had resolved to basically take what he could, so he smothered the burgeoning fuzzy feeling and focused on the erection against his thigh. Shifted his leg again and covered his hesitation with a joke.

‘So, you do realise that having all the lights on at the old Givens place sort of blows our cover, right?’

‘Which cover? The trailing Boyd-RICO thing, or this thing?’ Raylan skated his hand up under Tim’s shirt and ran his fingernails down again. Tim shivered despite himself.

‘Why are you really here?’

‘On my way down to Mexico, trying to track down the federale that stumbled on Johnny Crowder a coupla months back.’

‘Ah. So this isn’t a booty call then?’ Tim shifted his leg against Raylan again and was rewarded as his hand dipped lower against the curve of his spine and underneath the waist of his jeans.

‘Well, I thought it might be nice to start the road trip off on a high note,’ Raylan said and leaned in to kiss him.

As Tim opened his mouth to him, he could taste the faint hint of vanilla on his tongue. Because of course with Raylan, any fuel stop also involved an ice cream stop. He pushed forward, their chests flush against each other and squeezed the flesh underneath his hand again.

Raylan groaned into his mouth, and his hands wandered down to the front of Tim’s jeans to work at his belt.

Tim could feel his arousal building, but he mustered some self control and pulled his mouth away. ‘If you really think you can drive into Harlan in that car and with that hat and think you weren’t noticed, you are a goddamned idiot.’

Raylan grinned and went to work on Tim’s jeans. ‘Well possibly, but this is my family home and I am trying to sell it, so my presence here isn’t all that unexpected.’ He slipped a hand down the now-open front of Tim’s jeans and cupped him lightly through his underwear.

Tim fought the urge to lean back and close his eyes.

‘How much have you knocked the price down in the last few months,’ he asked instead, as Raylan ran one fingertip gently up his shaft. 

‘Why, you looking to buy?’

‘I could be persuaded. Original crown moulding, copper wiring, one of those fancy toilets where you pull the chain, Constable Bob’s right bicuspid. Needs new wallpaper, though, and the hot water ain’t for shit.’

Raylan pulled back a bit, but his finger kept stroking Tim. The gentle ministration was maddening, and Tim felt his vision fog as the blood rushed to his crotch. ‘Tim, I never ever imagined that it would be real estate chat that would get you going.’

Tim focused his gaze on Raylan’s mouth, thought about how much he wanted to do obscene things to it. He reached between them and wrapped his fingers around Raylan’s wrist.

Raylan looked at him, seemingly surprised, but he didn’t withdraw his hand from Tim’s pants. 

Tim licked his lips. ‘You ever sneak someone in through that bedroom window of yours after your parents went to sleep?’

‘Maybe.’

‘A guy?’

Raylan gently removed his hand. Looked thoughtful. ‘No. Not exactly.’

He stood up straight and pulled back. Without his wiry height leaning over him, Tim suddenly felt cool and exposed, the chilly air of the house wafting in through his open fly. Tim wondered whether or not that counted as a tacit admission about Crowder, and if so, if he had pushed things a bit too far too soon.

He tugged at Raylan’s wrist. ‘Well, if you ever wanted to, now’s your chance.’

Whatever cloud had crossed his mind was gone just as quickly, as Raylan smiled down at him and leaned forward to kiss Tim again. He pulled his wrist away and linked their hands together, a newly intimate gesture that took Tim a bit by surprise, never mind that Raylan had just had his hand down the front of his jeans. Raylan kissed slow and confident, with a sort of languid precision that never seemed rushed, but always, always had a purpose. Tim reached up to thread the hand not linked with Raylan’s up through the greying hair at his temple. Raylan groaned into his mouth and pushed forward again, pushing Tim back into the hard wood of the door frame. 

Raylan broke away first and started backing up towards the stairs, pulling Tim behind him. ‘As much as it would fulfil a teenage fantasy to have you in my bed, Tim, I don’t think that room has seen a feather duster since my momma passed. Aunt Helen wasn’t much for extra housekeeping.’

Tim allowed himself to be tugged towards the stairs. ‘Also, while you are a rangy son of a bitch, I don’t think we’d both fit.’

‘Squeaks something awful too, if I remember correctly. Not great for athletic activity.’

Raylan put one foot on the first step and turned to look at him, his expression a little hesitant. He’d draped his jacket on the banister and reached for it now. ‘I was also thinking that with a little more time and foresight, we could, uh...’ he started to flush.

Tim wanted to laugh out loud, but he kept his face stoic. ‘Uh, what, Raylan?’

His ears were definitely pinking. ‘Well...’ his fingers involuntarily squeezed Tim’s.

‘Raylan, are you asking — this time in your sexually-repressed, country boy way — if we can fuck?’

Raylan looked relieved. ‘Yeah, that’d be about it.’

‘Please tell me you didn’t buy condoms and lube on the same receipt you plan to submit for travel expenses.’

Raylan huffed. ‘What am I, some kind of asshole? Gimme a little credit.’ He grabbed the jacket off the banister with his free hand and started tugging Tim up the stairs with the other. 

——

‘So what brings you up to Louisville?’ Suds says by way of greeting as he sidles up behind Tim’s barstool.

Tim turns on his seat to greet his closest remaining friend with a brotherly hug and manly pat on the back.

It’s been about three months since he last saw Sudarsky, and he’s pretty sure his buddy has lost another quarter inch of hairline in that time. But he looks well — happy, domesticated, settled. Tim wonders if he’d be willing to sacrifice his hairline for that sort of general contentment and honestly isn’t sure which way he leans at this point.

Suds gives him an extra squeeze in his hug, almost like he can sense that Tim could use it.

‘Oh, you know, it was a Friday.’ Tim hands Suds the Miller Lite he ordered for him in anticipation. Suds likes shit beer, Tim isn’t picky as long as it gets him drunk.

Suds slides into the bar stool next to Tim’s, kindly seems to be willing to not pick at Tim’s emotional scabs right away — Tim knows it’s probably coming, though — and takes a gulp from the bottle.

‘So Jennifer got a promotion,’ Suds says and signals to the bartender for two shots of bourbon.

Tim raises an eyebrow. ‘Yeah?’ Suds’ better half does something in public relations and makes the bulk of their income.

Suds has a wide grin on his face, proud of her accomplishments, unbothered that he winds up doing most of the housework and child-rearing. Suds is a ‘Wife Guy’ — never mind that he and Jen aren’t married — and one of the reasons Tim comes up this way as often as he does is to feed off that positive, progressive familial energy like an emotional vampire.

‘Yup. Big pay rise. We thought about maybe trying to get a bigger house, but this one is fine, really. Might let me finally stop hustling though. Do something else with my time now that the kids are in school.’

The bartender drops too shots in front of them. Tim takes another drink of his beer. ‘That’s great, man. What are you thinking?’

‘Dunno, volunteer for a bit. Feel some things out. Something wholesome for the betterment of man.’ Suds grins and for a moment he looks 21 again, hairline and all.

Tim slides the shot along the varnished wood of the bar, picks up his own and tips it towards his pal in a move Suds mirrors and they drink it down.

‘How about you?’ Suds asks, putting the shot glass down and signalling for another so it’s there when they need it. ‘What  really  brings you up this way?’

Tim takes another pull off the bottle so his grimace isn’t obvious. The bartender refills the shot glasses and wanders back off.

‘Look, dude,’ Suds says as he walks away, ‘I know you’re a stoic son of a bitch, but after all these years, I also know when something is up. You still seeing that cute little number? The blonde with the patriotic parents?’

Tim snorts. ‘Reeeee-gan, not Raaaay-gan, you illiterate. And yeah, at least for the moment.’ He sighs and eyes the shot in front of him, tempted. ‘I dunno man, not really feeling it.’

Suds is angled slightly on his stool and he looks at Tim consideringly in a way that makes Tim squirm. ‘That because of her or because of you?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I think that’s not what’s really bothering you.’

Tim feels his neck flush along his collar. He downs the rest of his beer and signals for another.

‘It is  part  of what is bothering me.’

Suds shrugs and sips at his beer. ‘You can tell me. Or not.’

Tim starts picking at the label on his empty bottle. ‘What the fuck is this, you level up in therapy or something?’

Suds lets out a laugh. ‘Yeah, you attend enough sessions, you get your very own merit badge. Which you’d know if you ever went.’

The bartender puts the bottle down in front of Tim and walks away. ‘I don’t need therapy, I have you. Christ man, you must be the most annoying parent in the PTA.’

‘Right, I am. Spill.’

Tim sighs and downs the shot in front of him. It goes down a little too easily. Suds passes him the one in front of him, and Tim knocks that one back too.

‘He texted.’

Suds looks puzzled. ‘Who texted?’ Tim gives him an incredulous look and realisation dawns. ‘Oooooohhhhh, _he_ of the _hat._ ’ Suds mimes lowering a hat onto his egg-shaped head with both hands and Tim grins despite himself.

‘Yeah, of the hat.’

Suds let’s out a low whistle. ‘Shit, how long has it been?’

Tim decides that it sounds kind of pathetic to be too precise on this one and rounds down in the broadest possible way. ‘Four years or so?’

‘Huh. What he want?’

Tim takes another pull of his beer and runs a hand through his hair. ‘He’s coming through Lexington for work. Wants to get a drink.’

Suds raises his beer bottle at the bartender. ‘Hey man, can we get another round, please?’ He looks back at Tim. ‘That sounds kinda innocuous.’

‘Yeah, sounds that way. But it’s not.’

‘Maybe he wants to apologise?’

‘Ain’t got nothing to apologise for.’

The bartender puts two more bottles down in front of them. Suds cocks his head at Tim. ‘I’m not sure I’d agree.’

Tim can feel his resentment building and tries to tamp it down. Sets his jaw. ‘I knew what he was like. Knew what he had waiting for him on the other side. Knew what I was getting myself into.’ He downs the rest of the bottle in front of him and slides it to the back edge of the bar. Pulls the fresh one closer. ‘Eyes and flies wide fucking open.’

‘I know that, dude,’ Suds says after a moment. ‘But you still wound up getting kinda dinged. It was more than buddy fucks.’

Tim sighs, hangs his head. ‘Yeah, much to my eternal shame.’

Suds claps him on the shoulder. ‘No man is an island.’

‘So you’re Bon Jovi now?’

Suds continues, ignoring Tim’s attempt at a joke. ‘You couldn’t expect to stay insulated from human connection forever. And while I can’t say I ever met the man, I heard you talk about him even before you got involved with him. And — apart from thinking you’d have better taste than to be swept off your feet by something as cliched as a man in a cowboy hat — it sounds like part of the appeal was that you understood each other.’

Tim rolls his eyes even though he knows Suds is probably right.

‘You’re a caustic, misanthropic son of a bitch with some serious damage and a fair few control issues,’ Suds adds. ‘Seems like you just had a fair few things in common.’

Tim glares at him. ‘I have to take a piss.’

Suds shrugs. ‘Hey, you’re the one who keeps coming up here for the free therapy. And Jen’s waffles.’

Tim slides off the barstool and stalks to the bathroom. He uses the urinal, and catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror as he moves to the sink to wash his hands.

He knows he’s lost the edge of youth he was still clinging to when he first moved to Kentucky nearly seven years ago now. His eyes are sunk deeper into his face, and the set of his mouth is harder. He was no innocent when he walked into Lexington and, while he thinks he probably could still pass for early-30s from a distance, he knows his eyes give him away up close.

He can’t believe the coldness in them hasn’t chased Reagan away all on their own. 

Suds is infuriatingly correct. Tim took Raylan’s exit hard in part because Raylan was the first person Tim had met in years who seemed to _get him._ The sex was good. Really good, but the loss of it wasn’t what gut-punched Tim when Raylan walked out of Lexington and towards the warm sun of Miami and middle-aged parenthood. Raylan was as fucked up as Tim was, and he dealt with it the same way Tim did — too much booze, and a dry, hillbilly wit as a defence mechanism. It’s why they worked as partners, and as friends, and — for a little while anyway — as lovers. Tim hasn’t had any of that as good since. 

He doesn’t know what Raylan wants, asking to see him out of the blue like this. But Tim does know he wants something of that old relationship back, even if it’s not the sex bit. 

He dries his hands with a paper towel. Reaches into his jacket for his phone.

_ There’s a new place near the office. Serves the type of beer you like — the kind of IPA that tastes like a sock full of quarters and burns the roof of your mouth. _

Hits send and goes back out to join Suds at the bar.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this is turning into a longer thing than I originally planned. I rewatched Season 6 to get it to fit in to the timeline, and it just meant things kind of snowballed a bit.
> 
> 4/6

It had been a hillbilly sort of day. A whole day of redneck threats and insinuations, no matter how wrapped up they were in Markham’s three thousand dollar suits.

Tim could not fathom why anyone would want to leave the wilds of Colorado for the ass-end of Kentucky when there was plenty of perfectly good flyover farmland in the middle.

The man was a walking John Denver song with less whimsy and more murderous intent.

And now they had to worry about Loretta McCready, who was absolutely not going to sit back and let her drug kingpin plans get wrecked by anyone, let alone a reborn carpetbagger like Avery Markham.

Tim liked Loretta.

‘Is she gonna take your advice?’ he asked, breaking a long silence.

Raylan had his eyes closed, upright against the side of the truck. His brows knitted together underneath his hat as he cracked one eye open.

‘Who?’

‘Loretta.’ Tim watched the Staties up on the road wave another car through the roadblock.

‘Shit no.’

Tim fought back a grin. ‘You sound kind of proud.’

‘Resigned, more like.’

‘Christ, Raylan, if this is how you plan on approaching  actual parenthood, Willa is going to walk all over you by the time she can tie her shoelaces.’

Raylan snorted. ‘That was already going to happen. But if she manages to not get herself killed in the next few weeks, Loretta will be fine. She is going to be running this county by the time she can get a legal drink.’

‘Great. I’ll need a reason to keep running up the office gas budget coming down here once we lock up Boyd.’

Raylan sighed, watched a semi truck waved through. ‘I meant to ask if you’d mind keeping an eye on her. Once I’ve gone.’

Tim felt a dangerous constriction in his chest at the reminder of how finite this whole thing between them really was. It had come up in fits and starts — every time Raylan whipped out his phone to get all misty-eyed about a grinning baby, for example — but Tim could often go whole days without really consciously remembering that it was happening. In fact, he’d spent the whole day with Raylan and hadn’t thought about it once. Murder inquiries could be like that. But now, here was Raylan asking Tim to watch over his surrogate sort-of daughter like he was marching off to war, and not moving down to Miami to be with his burgeoning family.

A thing that didn’t really include Loretta. Or Tim, for that matter.

He swallowed, cleared a mysterious tightness in his throat. ‘Yeah, of course. But please stop talking about Miami like you’re going off to die. Unless you think you’re gonna suffocate under the waft of desperation and Drakkar Noir.’

Raylan grinned in the shadow of his hat. ‘Thank you.’

Another car waved through, no Ava.

They lapsed back into silence. Tim could feel the warmth from Raylan’s jean-clad leg next to his, not quite touching. From a distance, he probably looked relaxed, but Tim could feel the tension thrumming through his partner like an overstrung guitar.

Tim wanted to provide some sort of reassurance that Ava really was probably fine, but he knew Raylan wouldn’t listen, and Tim’s flat delivery would likely be the opposite of reassuring.

Another vehicle waved through, and the line into Harlan inched along. It really was baffling that there could be this much traffic into this backwater at one in the morning.

He looked along the line of headlights, elbowed Raylan. ‘Hey, is that that asshole’s truck?’

Raylan looked up, immediately alert, and squinted up at the row of cars. ‘How the hell can you see anything in this light?’

‘Super secret sniper vision. Or maybe you’re just getting old.’

‘Well shit, Tim. Don’t sugarcoat it.’

‘Don’t worry, you’re still easy on the eyes.’

Raylan shifted slightly and rested his leg against Tim’s, still casual against the side of the truck. ‘You saying you think I’m pretty?’

Tim rocked on his foot, letting his leg press more firmly against his partner’s. ‘Raylan, you know you’re pretty. It is considered bad manners to solicit positive reinforcement for your own vanity.’ He gestured absently at the line of headlights along the road. ‘It’s definitely that asshole’s truck, by the way. Ain’t nothing generates that spikey outline quite like Crowder’s head.’

‘Gimme your scope.’

Tim fished his rifle scope out of his coat pocket and handed it over.

Raylan pushed himself off the truck as he peered through it, and the sudden absence of his body heat really brought home the fact that they were outside in the chill in the small hours, skirting around the subject of Raylan’s inevitable exit from their torrid little affair. Tim just wanted to be in bed. Raylan was an optional addition in this fantasy, useful mostly for his remarkable ability to run warm for someone so slim.

A whole day of hillbilly nonsense.

‘Yep, you’re right,’ Raylan said, lowering the scope. With the hat, and in the dim lights from the roadblock casting shadows across his face, he looked a bit piratical. ‘She looks unharmed, but would be good to get a bit of confirmation.’

Crowder’s truck pulled up to the roadblock. At this distance they couldn’t hear what he said, but Tim was pretty sure he caught a glimpse of his teeth as the flashing lights from the squad car illuminated the cab. Megawatt smile and all. Raylan raised the scope again.

‘Trying your hand at lip-reading?’ Tim asked.

‘You didn’t hear her, Tim,’ Raylan said. ‘I think she’s scared enough to bolt. And then where would we be?’

‘You can be concerned with her welfare beyond how it affects the case,’ Tim answered.

The trooper waved Crowder’s truck through and Raylan lowered the scope, handed it back off to Tim. ‘Thank you for your permission.’

The two KSP officers made their way over to them.

‘How’d she seem?’ Raylan asked.

‘Well, if you’re asking my opinion, I’d say she seemed on edge,’ the younger of the two answered.

Tim glanced over at Raylan, who sighed. ‘Alright, you can wrap it up, thank you.’

‘What do you think?’ Tim asked as the Staties walked back up to the road.

Raylan considered. ‘I think you’d better get your ass back to Lexington and find Albert Fekus before he blows this whole thing up.’

Tim nodded.

Raylan rubbed at his eyes. ‘Come on, I’ll drive you back to the house to pick up your truck.’

‘Could use some coffee,’ Tim replied as they trooped back to the town car, parked in the shadows along a dirt road off the highway.

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Raylan said, opening the door to the car.

‘And we should call Rachel.’

‘Agreed.’

——

Tim gets back to Lexington in the early afternoon on Saturday, full of waffles — homemade cream with a splash of bourbon because Jen doesn’t do anything half-assed — and a mild hangover, bolstered by Suds’ ersatz therapy.

He’s still wearing yesterday’s clothes, and while he showered in the guest bath before he left, he still feels kind of itchy, particularly since still more alcohol has sweated out of his pores on the drive back.

As the door swings shut, he peels off his jacket and tosses it on the armchair, not bothering to hang it up on the hook by the door. Drops his keys in the bowl of loose change on the counter.

Next comes his button down shirt and his belt. His firearm, cell phone and wallet he lays on the coffee table as he sits down to untie his boots and strip off his socks.

He leaves them where they fall and stands back up to undo his belt and remove his jeans.

On his way into the hall, he yanks the undershirt over his head and drops it on the floor. He pauses to drag his boxers over his hips and steps out of them as he turns on the light in the bathroom.

The dark circles under his eyes are even more pronounced in the mirror than they were before. He and Suds had stumbled into his house at 1 in the morning. They’d had to take an Uber, leaving Tim’s truck at the bar, and requiring Tim to reverse the journey after breakfast in the morning.

He opens the medicine cabinet and grabs two more aspirin for his burgeoning hangover — he can feel it in the back of his neck, which is usually the sign of a whopper to come — and swallows them dry.

He opens the door to the shower and turns the heat way up, allowing the steam to really accumulate before he steps in.

Immediately pictures Raylan in the shower at the old house in Harlan, hollering through the open bathroom door about how Tim should have gone to the other fried chicken shop in Evarts for dinner, not the one in Harlan proper. 

Dinner had been delayed that night. Raylan had come out of the bathroom and down the stairs damp, towel wrapped loosely around his hips. He’d blown Tim as he’d gripped tight to the kitchen counter, his senses overwhelmed by the smell of fried chicken and Raylan’s hot mouth pulling at him. He’d come so hard his knees had buckled.

Tim wonders if everything is now going to bring on a reminiscence about Raylan and if he will ever be able to shower — or eat fried chicken again, for that matter — without springing a boner.

——

Two hours later, and Tim had still not left Harlan.

To be fair, he had been under a direct order to spend the night at the old Givens place — although not specifically under the current circumstances, which would have likely as not resulted in disciplinary action if his boss found out about them.

On the way back to the house, Raylan had called Rachel from the car to let her know that it looked like they would need to revisit the Albert Fekus question in order to salvage Ava’s cover.

Rachel had told Raylan she had it under control and that Tim should get a few hours of sleep in case they had to go in shooting when they picked up Fekus in the morning.

‘Better for the paperwork if I haven’t been on the clock for 48 hours straight and wind up having to shoot someone,’ Tim had replied when Raylan had relayed this instruction as they turned up the long, dark road leading to the house. ‘Thinking like the boss.’

‘Do you need to sleep?’

‘Not particularly.’

Raylan had lunged at Tim as soon as they’d gotten inside the house, grabbing him by the lapels of his jacket and shoving him into the refrigerator as he’d kissed him, apparently determined to expend all of his pent-up stress and anxiety about Ava and Markham and Loretta on Tim, who was perfectly happy to manhandle him right back.

They’d knocked over one of Aunt Helen’s ceramic roosters as they’d stumbled towards the stairs, breaking off a wing.

‘Shit — ‘ Tim had begun to apologise.

‘Fuck it,’ Raylan had said, stripping Tim’s jacket off his shoulders as he had pushed him backwards up the stairs.

It had been physical, aggressive and fast. Raylan had taken him from behind, setting a relentless pace that had caused the headboard to slam into the wall and dislodge an indifferent watercolour from its nail.

Tim was now rethinking his boast that he could get back to Lexington without a few hours’ sleep, let alone go a whole day where he might have to aim at someone.

He was drifting just on the edge of unconsciousness when Raylan broke the silence.

‘Rachel thinks I’m sleeping with Ava.’

It was a testament to Tim’s physical satiety that he only managed a mild eyebrow raise as he turned his head to look at the man in the bed next to him.

‘Did she say that?’

‘Just a feeling.’

‘Are you?’

Raylan grimaced. ‘No.’

‘Convincing.’

Raylan turned on his side and faced Tim. ‘I’m sleeping with you.’

‘For the moment.’ As soon as the words left his mouth, Tim wanted to take them back. They sounded petulant and bitter, even though he delivered them with the usual indifference in his tone.

Raylan looked stung. Tim’s words hung in the silence between them.

‘I’m sorry,’ Tim said. ‘That came out different than how I intended. I’m just tired.’

‘I’m not sure how it could have come out any differently than it did,’ Raylan said after a moment. He reached an arm out across the six inches of no man’s land between them and rested his hand over the tattoo on Tim’s chest. ‘Are you okay with this?’

Tim turned his head back to stare up at the plaster ceiling. So much for a few hours of shuteye. Raylan’s hand was warm against his chest, and Tim wondered if he could tell that his heartbeat had sped up. ‘Don’t read too much into my silence,’ he said, by way of an answer. ‘I am just trying to put my thoughts in order.’

‘Seems like it should be a fairly easy yes or no.’

Tim set his jaw. ‘You’re reading too much into my silence after I specifically told you not to do that.’

Raylan pulled his hand away and rolled into his back. ‘You’re not okay.’

‘That isn’t what I said.’

Raylan sighed heavily. ‘I’m sorry.’

Tim glanced over at his partner, just visible in the moonlight from the window and wondered how they had stumbled on to this subject so soon after they’d fucked. They’d cleaned up — mostly — but the smell of sex was still redolent in the air, and at least some of the sweat still sticking to Tim’s back was not his own. He tried to order his thoughts.

‘You ain’t got nothing to apologise for,’ he said after a moment. ‘I knew this had an expiration date, and neither of us is known for our success with long-term...commitments.’ He’d almost said  _ romantic_, but caught himself.

He could hear the rise and fall of Raylan’s breathing. 

He continued: ‘Maybe if you didn’t have somewhere else to be, and maybe also if you were someone else and not the same asshole who has burped his way through multiple barbecue fast food meals in my presence —‘ Raylan gave a soft huff of laughter next to him ‘— then  perhaps this conversation might have gone a different direction. But as it is, Raylan, yes. I am okay with this.’

Tim was like, 60 percent sure he was telling the truth.

He turned on his side and propped his head on his elbow. Raylan’s profile was annoyingly perfect in thoughtful repose. Tim wanted to reach out and run a finger down the slope of his nose. ‘But you should ask yourself if you are okay with it.’

Underneath the blankets, Raylan shifted his foot and touched it to Tim’s, even as their upper bodies remained separated.

‘I don’t know what we’re doing,’ Raylan answered after a moment.

‘It’s pretty straight-forward,’ Tim said, trying to cover up a sudden fear that Raylan was setting up to call time on this midlife heteronormativity crisis. ‘I could try and draw you a diagram. It’ll have to be stick figures though.’

‘I know where all the bits go, Tim,’ Raylan said. ‘And I think we just had a practical demonstration that was more effective than your stick figures.’ He turned back on his side to face Tim. ‘What I mean is that I did not really plan on this.’ He gestured vaguely at the space between them.

‘Christ, you think I did?’

Raylan sighed and reached over to skirt his hand along Tim’s shoulder. ‘No, but I think you probably have less to lose.’

It didn’t sting any less just because it was true. Tim felt his anger bubbling, and he shrugged Raylan’s hand off his shoulder as he sat up, the sheets and duvet falling to his waist. Raylan could be such a selfish prick sometimes. ‘Right. Well, I think it’s time I got on the road. Be a peach and make a pot of coffee while I take a shower.’

Raylan looked startled. ‘Fuck Tim, I didn’t mean — ‘

Tim tossed the sheets back and stood up, scouring the floor for his clothes. ‘I know you didn’t mean it, Raylan.’ He found a sock and his shirt by the side of the bed. ‘But I’m not sure how it could come out any differently than it did,’ he echoed. His boxers were hanging off the bedside lamp.

Raylan was sitting up in bed displaying incredible sex hair, and Tim felt a fresh wave of resentment that Raylan had felt compelled to shit all over the warm afterglow by bringing up Ava Crowder in the first place. And now he wasn’t going to get any sleep. He searched the floor of the darkened room for his jeans.

‘Goddamn it, I said that ain’t what I meant.’

Tim found his jeans by the door, along with his other sock. ‘Yeah, I picked up on that. But thank you for reiterating.’

Raylan angrily swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. ‘Then where the fuck are you going?’

Tim could feel all of his emotional defences kicking in, particularly the propensity for glib comebacks, and he decided now was not the time to stifle his instincts. ‘Lexington. To bail out  _your_ CI. As we discussed oh, about two and a half hours ago now.’

Raylan was upset. His jaw was clenched and his shoulders were squared, and it occurred to Tim that they probably both looked ridiculous posturing like this: cocks out, all naked glory. Raylan certainly did, anyway. Tim leaned casually against the doorframe, the clothes draped over his arm adding a degree of modesty so that at least he would come out of this looking like the more dignified one.

‘What I meant,’ Raylan began, his lips a thin line, ‘was that I am not sure where this fits in with me leaving. And what it means once I do. I’m moving down there because my daughter is there with her mother, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life so close to where I started it.’

‘Yes, as you reminded me just a few hours ago when you asked me to watch sagely over Loretta as you ride off into the sunset. Which, no worries man, I like Loretta.’

‘I can’t change this, Tim.’

‘I wasn’t asking you to.’

‘Then why are you angry with me?’

‘I’m not angry,’ Tim blinked slowly and marvelled at how calm he was feeling. Some sort of instinct had taken over and his breathing was slow and even. ‘I think you’re angry, and I think what that says to me that you’re either not okay with this, or you don’t know if you are. That’s fine, but I have no desire for this to turn into an episode of  _Dr_. _Phil_ while you figure it all out.’

Raylan’s shoulders slumped. ‘So you’re saying we should stop.’

‘I’m saying you should let me get on the road so I can go put the fear Uncle Sam into this slapdick prison guard before Katherine Hale goes after your ex.’ It wasn’t an answer to Raylan’s question, but Tim didn’t really trust himself to answer the question correctly. As in: yes, they should obviously stop but no, there was no way in hell he was actually going to say that.

Raylan looked at him across the wreckage of the unmade bed. Tim looked back coolly, aiming to project a weary indifference that he knew was more than a little bit dishonest.

Raylan bent down and retrieved his jeans from the floor. ‘Right, okay. I’ll go make you some coffee.’

‘Thaaaank  you,’ Tim replied with an exaggerated drawl and vanished into the darkened hallway before his veneer of weary indifference started to crack. 

——

Reagan calls him on Sunday. 

Tim is lying on the sofa re-reading  _ The Hobbit _ , which is something he does whenever he is feeling anxious.

He considers letting it go to voicemail, but knows he’ll just psych himself out about having to listen to a voicemail. Reagan actually leaves voicemails, which Tim finds perpetually baffling, as he doesn’t think he’s left one outside of work since 2011.

‘Hello,’ he says, as he puts the phone to his ear.

‘Hi,’ she sounds distant and a bit tinny, like she’s got him on speaker. ‘I just wanted to check in before I head out.’

Tim isn’t quite sure what to say to this, so he scans through his mental list of banal questions and settles on: ‘You looking forward to it?’

‘Yeah, I think so! It’s just a few meetings with some advertising people, really — ‘ There is a pause. ‘ — and an old classmate has invited me to lunch. He says that they have an opening at their firm.’ This last bit comes out in a rush with nary a pause for breath, like she’s worried how he is going to react.

‘That is exciting,’ he says, neutrally. ‘You like Nashville, right?’ Here he has been trying to find a way to let her down gently, and he might just be saved by the eternal instability of the modern, millennial job market.

‘Yeah, it would be a be a big step up.’ She still sounds uncertain. ‘But it’s probably a long shot.’

‘Doesn’t sound like a long shot.’

‘No, I guess not,’ she allows.

Tim feels himself smile into the phone. It’s sweet that she’s trying to undersell it. He also concludes it’s even more important to not put her off her game before she leaves. That would just be a huge dick move. ‘Look, give it a go, do your best, and we can talk when you get back.’ He’s not much for pep talks, but he thinks he’s doing alright on this one so far. ‘It’ll work out for the best, no matter what.’

He winces, glad he’s on the phone and not doing this in person, because that is a total oversell on blind optimism that is total bullshit.

‘Okay,’ she says. ‘I’ll text you later this week.’

‘Good luck.’

He hangs up, clicks on his text messages and opens up his conversation with Raylan.

Thelast message is  _ Looking forward to it. _ Raylan sent it early Saturday morning and Tim doesn’t quite remember opening it because he and Suds were pretty sloppy by that point. If anything, he’s grateful he didn’t reply with anything regrettable.

Tim hasn’t replied with anything at all because he isn’t sure what to say.

He has opened it half a dozen times since getting back on Saturday, typed out more than twice as many replies and hasn’t sent shit. Doubts Raylan has noticed.

He tosses his phone back on the table and goes back to his book.

——

Tim’s phone had buzzed twice as he was on his way into the office. The first time he’d ignored it, the second time he’d assumed it must be Rachel with some work shit. It was his day for coffee, and he was still tired after the all-nighter the night before last.

A fresh variable in this strange, new world also known as ‘Thirtysomething.’

He’d glanced at the display at the next stop light: two missed calls, one from Rachel and one from Raylan.

Presented with a choice, Tim did the responsible thing and pulled over to call Rachel.

She had picked up on the first ring.

‘Hey, we have a body.’ No preamble necessary.

‘Good morning to you too, boss,’ he’d drawled into the phone.

Rachel barrelled on as if he’d not said anything, a growing habit of hers of which he was not particularly fond. ‘KSP detectives called me first thing this morning as a courtesy when they found Raylan’s business card in the dead guy’s pocket. Sounds like it might be that realtor.’

Tim had knocked his head into the headrest. ‘Lemme guess, you’re sending me back down there to babysit.’

‘Unless you think Raylan killed him. In which case, I give you permission to shoot him on sight.’ She sounded distracted, and he could hear the rustling of a file down the phone line. 

‘Rachel, I just got back from that backwoods shithole.’

‘Look, I got Nelson chasing down a fugitive up north, and I have a meeting with the Vas-squeeze, so I’m sorry to say you’re on immature dickhead duty.’ Using their shared insult for Vasquez proved she hadn’t lost her entire sense of humour at least.

‘Roger that.’

So here he was, back in Harlan. Less than 48 hours after he’d left it. And here he also was, sitting in the goddamned town car watching a goddamned pizza place full of mercs with the last person he wanted to be sitting with.

The silence was awkward. And Raylan had chosen to fill it by wandering off for an ice cream cone in lieu of lunch.

Tim was determinedly not watching Raylan chase drips of vanilla ice cream off the cone with his tongue. It was practically pornographic.

‘You still mad at me?’ Raylan asked between licks.

‘I wasn’t mad.’

‘You still annoyed?’

‘Perpetually, but not for that.’

Raylan was silent for a moment before Tim heard a crunch as he bit into the cone.

‘Look dude, it’s fine,’ he said. ‘I know you didn’t mean anything.’ He swung his gaze over to Raylan, who took another bite of his ice cream and looked thoughtful. ‘Like I said, there’s always been an end date on this thing, you don’t need to try and let me down gently as we approach it. I’m a big boy.’

‘I wasn’t trying to let you down,’ Raylan answered.

Tim rolled his eyes and brought his gaze back to the Pizza Portal parking lot. ‘I figure you’re bored. And I just happen to be convenient and a known quantity. Why you are choosing a bit of strange to liven up your sex life now as domesticity looms is a matter for the psychiatrist you should be seeing, but aren’t.’

Raylan had finished off his ice cream and reached into the console in the driver’s door for a fast food napkin to wipe his hands. ‘Well, you seem to have me all figured out, Gutterson.´ His voice was flat, and Tim wondered if he had pushed it too far. ‘But that doesn’t explain what you’re doing.’

Tim glanced at him. ‘It’s been a dry year.’

‘Men or women?’

‘Both, Raylan.’

Raylan tipped the brim of his hat upwards slightly so he could lean back more comfortably against the headrest. ‘You’re not a convenience, Tim, you’re a pain in my ass.’

Tim snorted. ‘The kind you kind of like sometimes, though.’

Raylan sighed. ‘Be that as it may, I still don’t quite know what we’re doing here.’

Christ, this was going to turn into an emotional outpouring while they were on the clock if someone didn’t put an end to this maudlin shit sooner rather than later.

‘Well, that is the sort of existential question they supposedly teach freshman philosophy seminars on,’ Tim answered. ‘Consider this your foray in freshman experimentation.’

Raylan shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘A bit late for that, by about 23 years, or so.’

‘Don’t I know it.’

‘So, are you still mad at me?’

Tim turned and looked over at Raylan. He was looking at him from under the brim of his hat, and his gaze was soft — the way he sometimes looked at Tim right before he fell asleep.

‘I wasn’t mad. Hey, is that Walker with a fuckload of henchmen?’

Raylan rolled his eyes and sat up straight in his seat.   
  


‘Fine, Tim. Have it your way.’ He started the engine.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 5/6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for continuing to drag this out. I made the mistake of rewatching ‘Brokeback Mountain’ for like the first time in a decade and it inspired me to add even more soulful introspection and monosyllabic conversations between bisexual cowboys than I initially intended. So this is now Chapter 5 of 6, but HONESTLY, we’re in the home stretch now.

Tim drives down to Harlan on Tuesday to run down a CI and takes the time to text Loretta to see if she’d be interested in coffee while he’s there.

He has kept his word to Raylan where Loretta is concerned and, for the most part, Loretta has put up with him hovering on the outskirts of her life, even if she doesn’t tell him much of anything. They usually meet up in the diner — that one Markham’s pubescent gun thug was so fond of — and he lets her steal his fries and they chit-chat about nothing much in particular.

She beats him there this time — it took him a little longer than he thought it would to track down his CI — and there’s a cup of steaming coffee waiting for him on the opposite side of the booth.

He slides in and she leans forward to tap the coffee mug closer, her face a blank mask that he doesn’t take personally. Honestly, he’d be more concerned if she looked pleased to see him.

‘Loretta.’

‘Deputy.’

Their meetings sometimes come off like a deadpan showdown. The last roundness of childhood has left her face, and her delicate features have sharpened as she’s moved into her 20s, but her skin is still smooth and unlined. A minor miracle in this part of the world. And her line of business.

‘You order?’

She waves dismissively at the mugs of coffee in front of them. ‘I got you some fries.’

Tim fights a grin. ‘You mean, you got yourself some fries that I am going to pay for.’

‘You can have some.’

Tim picks up his coffee and takes a sip as they lapse into companionable silence.

Loretta breaks it first. ‘He text you too?’

Tim reddens slightly and puts the mug back on the Formica table. He and Loretta have danced around the subject of Raylan enough over the years that he is sure she has filled in some of the gaps. Not much escapes Loretta. He finds he doesn’t feel as weird about that as he would have thought — he has no siblings, but their relationship seems to have evolved into how he would imagine it would feel to have a much younger sister he hadn’t grown up with. Kind of a remote fondness. They don’t really share things, but they don’t actively avoid them, either.

‘Sure did. Don’t tell me he’s actually deigning to cross the Harlan county line.’

Loretta lets out an unladylike snort of laughter. ‘Had the nerve to ask me to drive up to London.’

The waitress plops down a plate of fries in front of them, fresh out of the fryer. Loretta immediately dives at them.

‘You going to do it?’

She chews absently. ‘Haven’t decided, yet.’

Tim reaches for the ketchup bottle and squirts a giant helping onto his side of the plate. ‘Why not?’ he asks as lightly as he’s able.

She grimaces slightly. ‘What if he just wants to show me baby pictures? I don’t know how I would cope with the complete obliteration of the frontier lawman image. Like finding out all the best Westerns were directed by Italians all over again.’

Tim grins. ‘Well, I think the kid is probably around four or five, so presumably the worst parental impulses will have had time to fade by now.’

‘Still seems like a mighty big risk to me.’ She picks up another fry and dunks it into Tim’s puddle of ketchup. ‘You?’

Tim plays for time by shoving several ketchup-drenched fries in his mouth. He swallows and signals at the waitress for some water. ‘Yeah, he asked to meet for a drink on Friday. You can come if you want.’

She rolls her eyes. ‘Why on Earth would I want to sacrifice part of my weekend watching the two of you stare stoically at each other across a rickety table in some shitty dive bar? Christ, I could do that here just as easily and wouldn’t have to drive all the way up to Lexington and have to pay for a hotel.’

‘You could have the guest room,’ Tim offers, even though he knows she wouldn’t take it.

Loretta narrows her green eyes at him from across the table. ‘You have a guest room?’

‘I’m a 35-year-old, single man. I needed somewhere to put my 28-piece drum set.’

She helps herself to more fries, most of them from Tim’s side of the plate. ‘Not planning on getting lucky, then?’ she asks, shoving them into her mouth.

The waitress puts two glasses of water down in front of them. Loretta orders a slice of pecan pie. Tim is impressed that she is covering so many food groups.

‘You could treat it as a business trip,’ he replies. He really wouldn’t mind if she were there. They could present a united front as Raylan’s discarded bits of Kentucky. Maybe he could loop in Nelson, track down Art, go dig up Arlo to really juice the numbers. 

Too bad Rachel is in Seattle.

Loretta blinks at him. ‘Why deputy, that sounds like entrapment.’

Tim smiles and smothers a few more fries in ketchup. ‘Howabout I promise not to bust you?’

Loretta cracks a small smile, and suddenly she looks like the girl she really still is. ‘Tempting offer, but surely you can face the challenge by yourself. Isn’t that what you Ranger-types are good at?’ She hesitates slightly. ‘Besides, driving three hours to play third wheel to whatever your whole Raylan  thing  is just sounds painfully awkward.’

Tim can definitely feel his ears pinking now, and wishes this place served liquor. He takes a gulp of cooling coffee and pushes the rest of the plate of fries towards her. She sets on them like she hasn’t eaten in a week which, she may not have. Tim worries that she doesn’t take good enough care of herself, but he would never be stupid enough to say that.

——

‘Can you tell a mare from a stallion?’ Tim asked as they exited the diner.

‘Is that a come on?’ Raylan dug into his pocket for his keys.

Tim considered this. ‘I dunno. Depends what I was witnessing in there. Buying you that ice cream had all the energy of sliding a spare hotel key across the bar.’

‘So you’re jealous?’ Raylan said, a slight smile playing at the edge of his mouth, just visible in the light from the diner as they reached the car.

‘Well, it felt a little bit like I was watching a community theatre reinterpretation of _Brokeback Mountain_. I have to honestly say that it makes me question what it is you saw in me.’

Raylan unlocked the car door and pulled it open. He paused before getting in, long fingers gripping the doorframe. Tim tried not to think about those fingers wrapping around his dick and immediately did just that. ‘We really gonna start actually talking about this?’

Tim felt a weird constriction in his chest and hoped that it was a portent of a massive cardiac event that would save him from this conversation. He considered shutting his hand in the car door as self-flagellation for being stupid enough to broach the subject.

‘Why break a winning streak?’ he answered instead and climbed into the front seat.

Fuck, he was tired. This whole case was exhausting. Driving back and forth between Harlan and Lexington was exhausting. Constant surveillance was exhausting, and bad food and too much liquor was hard on his digestive tract.

Having feelings — Tim was self-aware enough to recognise the symptoms...prognosis: not great, probably terminal — wa s _exhausting_.

 _Fucking Raylan_ —  as both an adjective and a verb — _was exhausting._

This was probably the most sympathy Tim had ever felt for Ava Crowder. Hell, Boyd Crowder too, for that matter. He was really starting to see how fucking Raylan could drive even the most patient of people into the life of a shitkicker mafia don.

Raylan climbed into the driver’s seat and turned the key. Tim stared straight ahead at the back of Markham’s head through the diner window. He had a phone up to his ear, so at least that gamble looked like it might pay off.

As he pulled out of the nearly-empty parking lot, Raylan reached over the centre console and rested his right hand on Tim’s denim-clad knee. Tim could feel the heat of it through the cloth, and the ache in his chest grew heavier, in part because, for perhaps the first time ever, Raylan’s hand was on his leg and it didn’t seem sexual at all. Just sad, really. Two people in a huge goddamned mess.

Tim stared out of the window at the trees along the highway, unable to look over at his partner out of fear that this weird prickling sensation in the back of his throat would spill over into...fuck.

He shifted slightly in his seat and brought his hand to rest on top of Raylan’s, tangling their fingers together against his knee.

It felt like the beginning of the end of something.

——

Tim wakes up Friday morning before dawn, the sheets tangled around his legs and a hard-on that could pinch hit for the Astros.

He tries to will it down, thinks about how Raylan is probably now back in the land of the bluegrass and grows harder still.

He closes his eyes tight and slips his hand into his shorts, grabs hold of the base of his dick and grimaces. He doesn’t do this especially often — not because he’s repressed or anything, although he is definitely that as well — but because he has always been so good at tamping down his own impulses out of necessity that by the time he gets the time and space to jerk off, the urge has passed.

He runs his hand slowly up the length, shivers as he reaches the tip and cups it with his palm, twists his wrist and runs his hand back down.

——

They had driven back to the house in silence. As they turned off the highway, Raylan had taken his hand back to control the steering wheel on the unpaved road. Tim had released Raylan’s fingers without a fight and, without much of anything else to do with his own hand, had curled it into a tight fist and shoved it into his coat pocket.

As Raylan brought the town car to a rolling stop behind Tim’s truck and engaged the parking brake, neither of them said anything. Tim wasn’t sure if he preferred that to the alternative or not. The town car’s headlights created flat shadows in the trees, and he reached for the door handle.

‘Winona wants to try again,’ Raylan’s voice was ragged and flat in the echoing silence between them.

Tim pulled on the handle and cracked the door open partway, but didn’t move to get out. ‘For a kid? The one ain’t enough?’

Raylan grunted in response.

‘Oh,’ Tim feigned surprise. ‘You mean in a Ross-and-Rachel way like it’s sweeps season.’

Raylan looked down at his lap and didn’t say anything.

‘Well, that seems only reasonable,’ Tim answered his own question and wondered if the gravelly tone in his voice sounded as strange to Raylan as it did to him.

‘Yeah.’

‘I have my sleeping bag in my truck.’ Tim pushed the passenger door fully open and levered himself out of the seat.

‘Tim — ‘ Raylan began.

‘It’s okay, Raylan,’ he replied and shut the door. He fished around in his jacket pocket for his keys, deliberately trying to engage the cold, emotionless part of his cerebral cortex.

The woods went dark and quiet as Raylan turned off the engine. Tim clicked the unlock button from the key fob and tramped around to the back passenger door of his truck, the frosted leaves crunching under his boots. 

He heard Raylan climb out of the car. ‘Tim,’ he called again.

Tim ignored him and opened the truck door. His sleeping bag was shoved in the footwell behind the passenger seat and he needed to rock it a bit to get it free. There was a six-pack of bottled water underneath it and a fifth of Jack Daniels — unopened — Tim grabbed a bottle of water and shoved the whiskey into the back pocket of his jeans.

He was aware of Raylan slamming the car door and moving up to the house. His overnight bag was on the backseat, and he pulled the strap over his shoulder, gathered up the sleeping bag and the water and pulled his haul free, closing the door behind him with his shoulder. 

Raylan was standing on the front porch staring out into the darkness, his knuckles braced on his narrow hips and his hat pulled down over his brow. He looked every bit the frontier lawman, which was ridiculous enough of an image on its own to make Tim want to roll his eyes, even as he struggled with the weird crushing feeling in his throat.

He moved up the steps. ‘You gonna let us in, or what?’ he asked as he reached the porch, and was pretty pleased with himself that he sounded  normal.  Mostly.

Raylan turned his gaze to look directly at Tim and it stopped him short. There was no mischievous glint there, no attempt at humour or easy charm; a muscle was twitching along his clenched jaw and his eyes were deep pools in his skull. For the first time in Tim’s recollection, Raylan looked old. 

‘Will you just shut the fuck up for a goddamned minute?’ Raylan’s response was biting, and the severity of it made Tim take an involuntary step backwards, nearly right off the porch.

Raylan reached out and grabbed his arm, steadying him, but his grip held tight. ‘I am sick and tired of feeling guilty about this.’ Tim tried to shrug the hand off, but Raylan clenched his arm harder, his fingers twisting into the material of Tim’s jacket. ‘And I can’t fucking tell if you want me to feel guilty, or if you are just too fucking aloof to care.’

Tim didn’t say anything, just stared at him. It was a bit alarming to have this much of Raylan’s anger and frustration focused on him. He wondered absently if this was going to end in a shoot out, or if that would be too melodramatic. Was this how Boyd felt all of the time?

Raylan took a deep, shuddering breath and his fingers loosened their grip on Tim’s bicep, but he didn’t move his hand. ‘I didn’t mean for this to get to this point. I just kind of went with what felt right in the moment.’ He ran his hand up Tim’s arm to let it rest on his shoulder. ‘But I do feel guilty. I feel guilty about you, I feel guilty about Winona, I feel guilty about Willa, and I feel guilty about Ava and Boyd and all of this bullshit.’

His eyes were boring into Tim’s, the whites glinting in the dim light from the quarter-moon. Tim stayed silent. He wasn’t sure what — if anything — he was supposed to say.

‘Well?’ Raylan asked, clearly expecting him to have some sort of response to this heartfelt confession.

‘You told me to shut the fuck up for a goddamned minute,’ Tim answered. ‘It’s only been 50 seconds.’

For a moment, he thought Raylan was going to hit him, and for an even briefer moment, the masochist in Tim welcomed the prospect. Raylan’s hand tightened savagely on his shoulder, and the veins stood out along his neck; the twitchy muscle in his jaw stopped moving as he clenched his teeth.

Tim stood very still, focusing on the taut line of Raylan’s neck. In the shadow, he could just make out his pulse fluttering under the collar of his jean jacket. Tim longed to feel it beating against the flat of his tongue. 

Raylan was breathing harshly — he always did have a tendency to run towards rage if you needled him enough — in contrast to Tim who knew that he had retreated into an unnatural stillness. Tim flicked his eyes towards Raylan’s, expecting to see distaste mixed in with the anger, which perhaps Tim had been subconsciously pushing him towards this whole time. No reason for both of them to walk out of this with long-term emotional trauma.

But Raylan, as he could sometimes, managed to surprise him. His expression was inscrutable as he looked at Tim. He fought the urge to squirm under the intensity of it; he felt like Raylan could see right through his sardonic exterior and straight through to some hidden, vulnerable core that Tim liked to think he’d left behind in a shitty East Texas cul de sac. Or Afghanistan. Or Glynco. Certainly somewhere other than the ass-end of nowhere Kentucky where Raylan could stumble across it.

They stood there staring at each other for what felt like ages but was probably only a few seconds, before Raylan fished into his jacket pocket for the house keys. He broke eye contact to unlock the door, and Tim nearly let out a sigh of relief as he moved to fix that intense gaze on something other than him.

Raylan turned back as he swung the door open. ‘I don’t want to leave angry at you.’

Tim let the arm holding the sleeping bag drop to his side. Well, fuck, that was devastating.

Raylan reached forward to take Tim’s sleeping bag, untangling the nylon cord from his fingers. Their fingertips brushed, and Tim felt his stomach lurch. He could smell Raylan — a hint of cologne, the faint spice of sweat. As he straightened to his full height, now holding Tim’s sleeping bag, the distance between them shrank down to virtually nothing.

‘Tim,’ Raylan said again, softer this time, and Tim’s head went fuzzy and his stomach lurched again. He needed to get some space before he actually unraveled. Or kissed him. Or dropped to his knees, or whatever. The empty door to the dark house was as good an exit as any. He made a beeline for it, brushing past Raylan.

As he moved past, Raylan caught his wrist, pulling Tim up short. His grip was firm.

‘We should — ‘ Tim started, his voice alien to his own ears.

Raylan pulled on his wrist. ‘I asked you to please shut the fuck up for a goddamned minute.’ 

From this angle, Tim couldn’t see more than an outline of Raylan’s face under the shadow of his hat, but he could feel the warmth from his lean frame and hear his breathing — a bit fast — in the quiet around them. Tim wondered if Raylan could sense as his own heartbeat picked up speed, because Tim certainly felt like the blood rushing through his head was deafening.

As Raylan tilted his head down, the rush in Tim’s ears became a roar, even though Raylan telegraphed the movement enough that it would have been visible from the fucking moon — no doubt making sure he wouldn’t startle like a cornered deer.

His mouth against Tim’s was sweet, hesitant, almost chaste, his fingers still wrapped around Tim’s wrist.

Tim’s disciplined body betrayed him — perhaps it was the exhaustion — and he relaxed into the kiss. Raylan, because he was both tactical and an asshole even when he wasn’t consciously trying to be either, pressed his momentary advantage and ran his tongue over the seal of Tim’s lips. And Tim, feeling a right fool — but a fool that knew he would go through with this epically bad idea again because it was Raylan and Raylan was usually involved in Tim’s more ill-advised decision making — invited him in.

It was slow and tender and neither of them moved to pull the other closer. The dull ache in Tim’s chest started to grow and mutate; part of it broke off to pool in his belly, and that was what finally prompted him to break away from and pull back.

‘I won’t say no,’ he said. His voice caught in his throat, the deep gravel turned up to 11, and his lips felt raw where he’d caught part of Raylan’s five o’clock shadow.

Raylan’s profile — Tim still couldn’t see much detail of his face — angled down to look where he still had a grip on Tim’s wrist. ‘It’s become something more complicated...than...’ his voice trailed off.

‘Buddy fucks?’ Tim supplied.

Raylan released Tim’s wrist and shoved his hand into his jacket pocket. ‘Yeah, that’s as accurate a term as any, I guess.’

Tim turned to look at the open door to the Givens house, absently wondered if any of this would have got this far without them both spending so much time here. Removed from Rachel’s watchful eye, hours cooped up together, too much booze and too little progress, he felt like it wouldn’t have happened without all that. A few drunken fumbles, aspirin in the morning, and gruff  not mentioning it at work and that would have been that. And would Tim have even let it get further if Raylan wasn’t leaving? He didn’t think he would have, if he were being completely honest with himself.

‘These things happen,’ he said aloud. ‘Ain’t no one’s fault.’ He turned to look back at Raylan. ‘Can we go inside, though? I’m freezing my dick off.’

Raylan let out a huff of laughter. ‘God forbid.’

The house wasn’t much warmer than the outside, but at least there was a light on in the kitchen: the dim, bare bulb above the sink that seemed ubiquitous in these sorts of houses.

He heard Raylan close the door behind them. Tim wandered into the living room and dropped his shoulder bag on the overstuffed armchair. The whiskey bottle was heavy in his back pocket, but if this was going to be it, Tim wanted to be sober for it.

He turned to look at Raylan.

He’d removed his hat, and was standing in the doorway picking at the brim. Tim’s sleeping bag was propped up against the doorframe. ‘Do you want to talk some more?’

Tim reconsidered the whiskey bottle in his pocket, but he took it out and dropped it on his overnight bag instead. ‘Not particularly,’ he answered honestly.

A small smile played at the edge of Raylan’s mouth. ‘I think we should.’

Tim shrugged. He was starting to feel itchy underneath his collar. ‘Okay.’ He unclipped his holster from his belt and put it too on top of his bag.

For all of Raylan’s apparent enthusiasm for talking, he took his goddamned time removing his jacket and draping it across the back of the chair. He unclipped his own firearm and put it on a side table, flopped his hat down on top of it.

Tim side-eyed the whiskey, but he settled for the bottle of water. Chilled from the car, it cooled his throat as he took a drink. ‘So,’ he said, trying to prod Raylan into saying something. If he wanted to talk instead of fuck, Tim wasn’t going to get in his way.

Raylan went to the sofa and sank down, letting out a sigh. ‘Yeah.’ He reached down to pull off his cowboy boots, but didn’t say anything else.

Tim narrowed his eyes at him. ‘You’re the one that wanted to talk some more.’

Raylan slumped against the sofa, his fingers loosely curled in his lap; Tim thought he looked a bit like a dejected greyhound, narrow and long-limbed. He had a hole in his sock again. The first time they’d slept together, Tim had been charmed by the hole in Raylan’s sock. Now, after....whichever number this was, he knew that Raylan had holes in most of his socks. Turned out that when you go to bed with a person enough times, a lot of that myth-building just isn’t all that sustainable. Tim had never reached that point in a relationship — not that this could really be termed one. 

‘I suggested we should, I didn’t say I wanted to.’

Tim looked at him across the semidarkness of the living room. ‘Then I don’t think we have to. When has any of this been about  _ should _ ?’ He put the cap back on his water bottle and reached up to pull off his jacket. ‘Think we long missed the train on _should_ at this point.’

He could see Raylan watching him as he shrugged the coat off of his shoulders. The knowledge that Raylan still wanted him — even with the promise of Winona and parenthood in Miami — went straight to the gravitational black hole that had been sitting where Tim’s heart used to be. Turned out even Tim had a place inside of himself that thrived off of gifted affection, and feeding it had caused it to grow and mutate and he wondered if it would wind up devouring him whole like Audrey ate Seymour. A realisation about himself that Tim wasn’t particularly keen to examine in more detail.

‘Yeah?’ Raylan asked, this time with a hint of hope in the question.

Tim started unbuttoning his shirt. ‘Yeah.’ He pulled it off of his arms and draped it neatly over the small pile accumulating on his overnight bag. He dropped to one knee and started working on the knot in his bootlace.

He felt the air shift as Raylan stood up from the couch, and he switched knees to work on the other lace. Raylan’s denim-clad legs stopped in front of him. Raylan reached over and ran the back of his fingers along Tim’s cheekbone, and Tim felt his eyes flutter shut.

‘You sure?’ Raylan sank down to his knees so that he was level with Tim in a way he rarely was.

Tim opened his eyes to Raylan’s darker ones. ‘Yeah.’ Christ, they really were shit at talking. Better to put them both out of their misery. He leaned forward and kissed Raylan again, his hands reaching up along his jaw and tangling with the hair at the back of his neck.

That did it: Raylan pushed forward into Tim, his fingers grasping at Tim’s shoulders. If the kiss outside had been chaste, this one was its polar opposite. Tim wanted to absorb him and fight him and fuck him all at once. 

Tim wrestled Raylan around until his back was pressed up against the armchair, Tim hovering above him. As he pulled back to look at him, Raylan’s pupils were blown black, his breathing rapid, and his mouth red from the force of Tim’s kiss. He had the beginning of a bruise along the slender column of his neck.

Tim leaned forward again, more gently this time. Raylan met him half-way. Slow, savouring, final.

It felt like the end of something.

——


End file.
